Let Your Memories Grow Wild

I am forever in debt to my first digital camera, the Canon Powershot S200. I remember purchasing it back in 2002 before my first trip ever over international waters into Taiwan. Although I was still in undergrad, I didn’t mind splurging on the camera because I knew that I wanted to preserve my moments in Taiwan with my dad as best as possible. The ironic thing is that I’m not quite sure where I’ve placed those photos today.

Over the years, taking photos became a healthy habit. Some may find it overbearing at times with the camera constantly pointed towards them, but what I’ve noticed is that when a person goes through photos and sees themselves in them, it sparks their curiosity to want to see more. It’s the desire to piece together the entire arc of a story in order to relive an experience with a person, place, or thing.

As I go through the photos and videos of my grandma during the latter years of her life, I realized that these digital artifacts served another purpose. They are reminders of what she stood for and what she believed in. As life presents its trials and tribulations, the photo of her on my desk keeps me grounded with whatever challenges I may face.

Thanks Grandma.

In 2005, my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia. For the next 4 years, I witnessed her transition from a once independent woman to someone that could no longer care for herself. As dementia took hold of her, she required 24-hour attention and was eventually moved into a nursing home.

During my visits with grandma, there was a sense of helplessness. She spoke a rare Chinese dialect that I was once fluent in, but had eventually lost due to the lack of practice. Communication between us was reduced to very basic conversations and gestures. Most of the time, I sat next to her listening to what she had to say.

Towards the latter part of her life, she was diagnosed with liver cancer. Her memory started to fade even faster. In an attempt to slow down the rate of her mental deterioration, I brought familiar artifacts such as family photos, Chinese newspapers, and meals that she use to enjoy prior to moving into the nursing home. With each item, her veil of forgetfulness had been temporarily lifted. She remembered my name; she remembered my brothers’ names; she even remembered how to count from one to ten in English.

As I reflect back on life with grandma, some of my fondest memories of her are tied to specific locations around her neighborhood in Queens. These various locations are like the artifacts that I used to bring to my grandma during my visits to the nursing home. They help to piece together enough of my past to help relive my experiences with her.

Problem
It’s 2011, and we still store our photos in a shoebox.

With our futuristic phones, we’re taking more photos and recording more videos than ever. Eventually, most of us are filing all of this into the cloud somewhere or onto our hard drives at home where they will probably never see the light of day. The problem with our fancy phones and online services is that they rarely encourage us to look back on the moments we’ve captured. They also fall short in helping us to relive those past experiences.

According to my brother, William Lu, a 4th year grad student at Yeshiva University who’s also doing research in memory, said that “these past experiences provide us with insight into current problems, helps us make informed decisions, and forms who we are.”

Solution
Story Forest is a service that gets your memories out of the shoebox by sharing and replaying your memories at locations where they were made within a city.

So why a city?
A city has more to offer than the setting of our own homes. It is filled with memory triggers that simultaneously stimulate all of our senses. It allows us to compartamentalize our memories into different parts of the city making the retelling of a story more vivid.

These memories, which stimulate both visual and auditory senses, are embodied by virtual trees that live on a digital layer overlaying the urban landscape. Through the use of a mobile device, pedestrians can grow their own trees or contribute to existing ones. When a story and its corresponding memories are added to a tree, a branch is formed along with its leaves. Each leaf represents a memory artifact (text, photo, or audio), related to that story. As others reflect on existing stories or as new ones are introduced, networks of branches are formed. These networks create a system for people to catalog and navigate through shared memories at a specific location.

Over time, individual trees planted throughout the city form system of interrelated memories. These systems then form larger clusters that represent the various periods of a person’s lifetime.

The trees of Story Forest are life’s trail markers, informing and guiding urban pedestrians on the path that lies ahead. By contextualizing a city’s environmental cues to geolocated memories, pedestrians are invited to recreate and reflect on their past experiences. In doing so, they are encouraged to live a more conscious present in order to make better decisions in the future.

The members of Story Forest are explorers and day dreamers that have had experiences within a city. They are able to step out of the their daily routine to ‘stop and smell the roses.’ They enjoy capturing moments on camera, scrapbooking, collecting trivial, but meaningful items, and don’t mind sharing their memories with friends and family.

User Persona (Also mentioned in the User Journey versions 1 and 2)

Ethan
Currently
Ethan is a young professional in his late 20s who has lived and worked in New York City for several years. He is tech savvy and (of course) owns an iPhone 3G. Prior to work life, he commuted into the city from New Jersey almost every weekend to hang out with friends or to visit his grandma, who has been living in a nursing home in Queens for the past 4 years. She was diagnosed with dementia a few years ago and requires 24 hour on-site assistance. Currently, Ethan lives in the Upper East Side with his younger brother, Harry, who is a 2nd year grad student at NYU. Throughout the week, Ethan and Harry take turns visiting their grandma.

Childhood
Ethan’s parents immigrated into New York City back in the early 1970s. When Ethan was 4 years old, his grandma in Queens took care of him for a couple of years as his mother was busy caring for his younger brother, Harry. In 1987, his parents decided to move to New Jersey in search of a better environment to raise their children.

After moving to New Jersey, the entire family made weekly visits to Chinatown to load up on groceries for the upcoming week. Ethan’s dad, who owned a restaurant in New Jersey, also had to resupply the restaurant’s stock for the week. On occasion, they would also visit their grandma in Queens.

Hobbies
Ethan is a collector of many things. During his childhood and teenage years, Ethan amassed a collection of hockey and baseball cards, comic books, and toys, which are all safely stored away at his parent’s home in New Jersey.

Currently, Ethan is an amateur photographer and keeps his photos stored privately on digital photo services like Flickr. He believes that capturing memories and reflecting back on them encourages us to live a more conscious present in order to make better decisions in the future.

Initial Ideas
My initial idea was to create a product that would maintain a persistent connection between a family and a loved one who had been placed into a nursing home. This stemmed from my personal experience with my grandma who lived at a nursing home in Queens for almost 5 years. Since she spoke a rare Chinese dialect and was suffering from dementia, our family want

After our first year of school, I left for Shanghai for a summer internship. Upon arrival, I wasn’t really sure what to expect of the elderly and their lifestyle in such a densely populated city. All I had was my experience at a nursing home in Queens, the Keystone Project (a project that I worked on with fellow classmates Katie Koch and Chia Wei Liu), and my childhood growing up with my grandma. After a few weeks of readjusting myself to the new city, I went out to do some initial research.

Fortunately, for the first month, I had a chance to live with my uncle’s in-laws who were independent and were well into their late 70s. I noticed that they had developed strong ties with their neighbors in their community and according to them, this was quite normal. As for the less independent, they had caretakers instead of nursing homes caring for them throughout the day.

During my three months in China, I noticed many outdoor activities happening at public spaces throughout neighborhoods in Shanghai. From Tai Chi to the Cha Cha, older adults were participating together in these group activities. This observation led me to my first thesis proposal, Dancing with Lights, which focused on improving mental acuity in older adults living in populated cities by encouraging a less sedentary lifestyle.

When I came back to the States, I realized that one solution for a group of people didn’t always quite fit with another. In other words, unlike China, the elderly in the States rarely spend their time outdoors, which meant that my initial proposal would have probably flopped.

I took a step back and decided to focus on younger adults. This idea was still relevant to people of old age because it encouraged physical wellness earlier on in life. By addressing physical wellness at an earlier stage, there is a greater chance for healthier habits to form, setting up a healthier lifestyle in the long run.

I then started to think about the city and the various modes of transportation that were available to commuters. From snowboarding in subway cars to forming words as a person ran up a flight of stairs to an extreme version of hopscotch on city sidewalks, I was looking for the carrot at the end of the stick that would get people to participate in such physical activities.

In the end, all of these proposed solutions seemed like they were a part of a larger solution. Unsatisfied, I went back to the drawing board.

As suggested by Jennifer Bove, I took some time out to reflect back on the concepts generated so far. From each concept, I pulled the most interesting idea and came up with the following list, which turned out to be my design principles:

• New layer of information
• Patterns
• Support through social networks online and/or offline
• Discovery/Exploration
• Happens in a public space
• Feedback (check-in, score, progress, achievements, etc.)

Around the same time, my thesis advisor, Rob Faludi, sent me an article about dérive (drift) written by Guy Debord. In it, Guy describes dérive as “a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities…just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape.” (1)

Satisfied with my design principles and inspired by the article by Guy, I continued ideating and came up with Mad Dash, a service that holds asynchronous foot races throughout the city where people compete against each other to win discounts at their favorite stores. Unfortunately, the thought of people bolting down the sidewalk during rush hour brought up safety concerns and the idea was dropped.

New Year, New Direction
In January 2011, I had a talk with Paul Pangaro, who was teaching Thesis Presentation, about my project and he asked me what was more important to me, the physical activity aspect or maintaining memories? After some thought, I felt that memories were more important since it was what sparked my interest in the first place.

Around mid-January, Craig Mod held a lecture at the studio on Post Artifact Book Thinking. During the talk, Craig weighed the benefits of a physical book against a digital book. One of those benefits included marginalia, which are basically notes written in the margin.

In physical books, these notes are written down and once the book is closed, they are forgotten. Unlike its physical counterpart, digital books provide an opportunity to bring these notes to life by sharing them among members within your social network. (2)

I started to think about how marginalia could apply to a city in a digital context. Are people able to leave behind their opinions, ideas, and viewpoints of the city as they move from one point to another? Can they share conversations about these points of interests? Through discovery and exploration, can we encourage people to move off the beaten path? To my surprise, I sort of touched on this topic earlier last semester, but was unable to solidfy on a concept until now.

The concept map from above helped set a foundation for me to work off of for the rest of the semester, phew.

Most of the popular location-based services such as Gowalla and FourSquare serve as middlemen to 3rd party vendors and their users. With these type of services, there isn’t much emphasis on the exploration of past memories, but more on what other people are doing. These services rarely encourage users to reflect on previous events.

Services that are more similar to Story Forest such as Path, Broadcastr, and Trover seem to fall flat at some point. For Path, people can take geo-tagged photos and can also leave comments for users. One con about this service is that all your memories are accessible to you, whether it’s through a mobile device or a desktop. This lack of inaccessibility creates an oversupply of data to users.

Broadcastr is a service that lets you geo-tag audio recordings at different locations around the world. One pro about this site is that it’s one of the few sites that utilizes the power of voice to convey personal narratives. One con is that not everyone wants to hear everyone. Case and point, Twitter’s Trending Topics.

Introduced to me by Liz, Trover is a narrative and location-based service by a former grad student, Dan Provost. One good thing about this app is that it informs the user about memories that have happened at certain locations over time. One con (a major one), is the lack of options for the type of content a user could leave behind.

Overall, these services fulfill some aspect of Story Forest. One thing I noticed is that most, if not all, of these services fail to create a narrative around the idea of posting or viewing photos. On top of that, with the exception of Path, these services are competing for heavy user traffic. This approach generally dilutes the target audience, which in turn makes their solution like everyone else.

The following are several prototypes that I’ve created ranging from lo-fi experience prototyping to participatory paper prototyping to tap-through wireframes.

Prototype 1 | Lo-fi Experience Prototyping
Overview
On February 17th, 2011, with the help of my brother, I completed my first round of prototyping.. Will was perfect for this session because 1) Story Forest is about reliving past experiences, which in this case was our early childhood in Manhattan and 2) our experiences were very similar since we are only a year apart in age.

Before prototyping, I had a list of questions along with some assumptions that I wanted to validate.

• What information medium effectively triggers memories and emotions, e.g. photos, text, audio, video?
• Would someone want to contribute to a memory tree?
• Does a memory die with an associated landmark?
• How does one feel after visiting several memory trees?
• Which memories are most valuable? Is it based on lifetime period? General events? or event-specific knowledge (ESK)?

Prototyping Plans
A few days prior, I had a chance to explore by foot the area that we grew up in during the early 1980s. This region covered parts of the Lower East Side (Rivington and Allen St.) and Chinatown. At each significant location, I took either a photo or wrote a message about what made that place special to me. I also had my mother do a voice recording via voicemail with her memories about raising us in the neighborhood. This piece of content was associated to the front doorstep of the apartment we used to live at on Allen street.  I then placed these pieces of content into envelopes which would then be opened at their respective locations. For content that required a digital device, such as my mom’s recording, additional instructions were placed into the envelope on how to access that data.

Here’s the list of locations that were plotted out for Will to visit including the type of media that was presented in an envelope at each spot:

1. 129 Mott Street (written note) – My dad used to visit this fish market when ordering stock for his restaurant
2. Bowery and Hester (photo) – This was where the Great Wall of Chinatown used to be along with the Music Palace movie theater
3. 62 East Broadway (written note) – The barber shop that provided us with the classic bowl haircut
4. Market Street and East Broadway (written note and photo) – Used to have lunch here while waiting for my parents to get their food shopping done
5. Eldridge and Delancey (written note) – There used to be a playground here
6. Eldridge and Rivington (written note) – The daycare center with the blue cots and Nilla cookies served with a glass of milk
7. 157 Allen Street (written note, photo, and audio) – My family’s first apartment

We skipped location #1 since the fish market was closed by the time we got there.

When we got to Bowery and Hester (#2), Will remembered the wall of graffiti that existed on the corner of the street, but it didn’t trigger the memory of the Music Palace movie theater that was located right next to it. After revealing the contents of the envelope, which consisted of the photo pictured below, he not only remembered the movie theater, but he also quickly recalled a memory about watching a Cantonese movie with my aunt when we were kids.

For the next location, 62 East Broadway (#3), my brother and I stood in front of the underground barber shop talking about how the barber was basically babysitting us while our mom was busy running errands. At one point, my brother mentioned the oscillating fan that used to sit in the corner of the shop, which was also one of my key memories of the place. That one memory helped to validate my own past memories and also further established a common ground between what we were reminiscing about.

At Market street and East Broadway (#4), the memory that he recalled wasn’t as important because, according to him, it was “still too recent.” Afterwards, as we made our way over to Allen street, Will all of a sudden stopped in his tracks and excitedly said “There’s this wafting smell of what seems like coffee.” Going back to the question of this being in a home vs. a city, this sensorial stimulation proves that this service should exist within the city landscape rather than a confined area such as a home because a city offers more variety in the types of memory cues.

Next stop, Eldridge and Delancey (#5). Will didn’t recall a playground ever being there, even after I gave him some details about the recreation area.

Before reaching our final destination, we walked by the school at Eldridge and Rivington (#6), where we used to attend daycare. Will didn’t remember the building, but he did remember certain events that happened inside such as the blue cots that we used to nap on.

As we finally reached 157 Allen street (#7), I handed Will a pair of headphones along with my iPhone. On it was a voice message that my mom left behind with some of the memories that she still retained about raising us in the neighborhood. In the video clip below, the facial expression and the overall reaction that Will displayed demonstrates that the audio piece was a powerful memory trigger. It’s also important to note that my mom’s memories about her getting us cakes for our birthdays triggered Will’s event-specific knowledge of getting a Smurf’s cake for his birthday.

Afterwards, Will mentioned that listening to the audio at that specific location motivated him to “try to go back in time to try to remember how it all happened.”

In hindsight, watching Will react the way he did was meaningful to me. It validated how we both felt about our childhood (lifetime period).

Conclusions

• More recent general events tend to not be as meaningful to rediscover unless it pertains to an event-specific knowledge
• Photos are efficient in triggering memory
• Audio is efficient in triggering emotional memory
• Contribution of memories to a memory tree at a specific location should not be restricted to having to be at that location
• Leaving memories behind should require as very little bio-cost as possible (voice)
• Capturing the reaction of a person to a memory should be considered

Prototype 2 | Participatory Paper Prototyping

The interaction between people with their memory trees plays an important role in this project. To figure out whether or not my proposed solution for the memory tree interface made sense, I did some participatory design using a paper prototype.

The Toolkit
My participatory design toolkit consisted of the following:

• Memory Tree – various sizes to simulate growth
• Memory Labels – annotate what memory each memory branch represents
• Accessible Memories
• Inaccessible Memories
• Branches – used to group memories and to connect to other relevant memories left behind by others

Process
After briefly explaining the scenario, I gave each participant the following tasks:

1. Populate the tree with a couple of memories using the toolkit provided.
2. How would you respond to a memory left behind by someone else?
3. What happens to a person’s memory tree when you tag that person to a memory in your tree?

Findings with Dave
Dave approached the prototype with the idea that his memories would be broken down into the following hierarchy:

1. location (tree)
2. spaces (branch)
3. memories (leaves)

The first example he cited that happened to fit this model was his parent’s home. This was a result of me forgetting to mention that this takes place within the context of a city where not all locations have well-defined spaces. Nevertheless, he proceeded and the following insights were a result of the exercise:

• This approach of breaking down a memory becomes complex instantly. It’s no longer a tree of memories, but a web of branches. Too many tiers to deal with. The example that was brought up, house > room > toy box > toy. It’s like the reversal of a memory palace.
• Does turning off memories after accessing them an attempt to get people to look at all other available memories?
• It’s very important to establish and visualize which branch is the original branch that all subsequent branches are branching off of.
• How can turning on and off memories create a conversation between people tagged to a memory?

Findings with Will

• It’s important to clarify that everyone has their own Story Forest.
• Why would someone want to access their memory again if they’ve accessed it already? What if we make a memory inaccessible for a year after accessing it?

Wrapping It Up
I realized that during this exercise, it was really important to clarify that each person has their own Story Forest. While a person can create trees and memories in their own forest, other people can also contribute to that person’s forest by tagging them in their own memories.

Also, since each person has their own Story Forest, the accessibility of memories of one forest are independent from another. Continuing from the example above, after I view the memory that my brother indirectly added (step 3-4) to my tree via tagging, I would not be able to access that memory for another year. Meanwhile, this would not affect the accessibility of the memory on my brother’s tree.

Overall, I think the interaction between people and their Story Forests (as seen above) creates a support structure that motivates and incentivizes them to help each other to achieve their goals. This conclusion would not have been possible if it weren’t for Dave and Will asking about how one’s action affected another.

Prototype 3 | Tap-Through Wireframes
I spent a week iterating and testing wireframes for the Story Forest iPhone app using the method as described by Matthijs Collard at Adobe. Using a combination of Adobe’s Fireworks, jQuery, and PHP, this prototyping method got me through a couple of rounds of testing. On the 4th round, its limitations were starting to show when I included swiping and other native iPhone gestures. I’m sure there are tweaks that exist (e.g. fixing the position of the main navbar), but I haven’t had a chance to dive into those yet.

Below are links to the iPhone wireframes that you can play around with. Not everything in the wireframes are hooked up. I kept my focus solely on the major call-to-actions in order to reduce the amount of time required for this phase of the project. I’ve also included the list of changes (towards the end of this post) from one version to the next, which were made based on user testing.

To download the wireframes to your phone, follow these really simple instructions:

1. Go to any of the following URLs in your Safari browser on your iPhone. Please note that these URLs do not work on your desktop.:
   http://storyforest.genelu.com/wf-rd4(Latest Version)
   http://storyforest.genelu.com/wf-rd3
   http://storyforest.genelu.com/wf-rd2
   http://storyforest.genelu.com/wf-rd1
2. You will then get the following message. Click OK.
   

   The message that pops up after navigating to the link. Click OK.

3. After clicking OK, click on the middle button (the arrow jumping out of the box) in the bottom tool bar. Afterwards, click on Add to Home Screen.
   

   Click on Add to Home Screen. This adds an app icon to your iPhone.

4. And voila! The prototype is now on your iPhone.

User Comments and Suggestions
In versions 1 and 2, I wanted to nail down these types of basic interactions before moving onto version 4, which has a larger emphasis on visual imagery.

Versions 1 and 2

• User was trying to tap out of the map modal window in order to access other trees.
• “The trees [on the map] should light up.”
• On Branch listing page, “1/4″ is not clear.
• When navigating other trees, there should be a “Next Tree” button.
• “2 of 4 Trees Nearby” is unclear.
• What does “12 Days” or “15 Days” mean?
• “Isn’t this just a filing system?”

Version 3

• Swapped out the folder/subfolder structure with an image of a tree pulled from Jer Thorp’s Tree Growth to better visualize the connections made between stories within a tree and its branches.
• Implemented a Compass feature to help users find a tree nearby. This is helpful when there are multiple trees located near each another.
• Notes have been added as a content type.
• A branch is required prior to adding photos, notes, or audio content to a tree. The branch serves as the overarching header of a group of content.

Version 4

• Updated the tree navigation to gestural swipes instead of the native iPhone directional pad.
• Simplified the compass. Someone suggested having leaves of a tree show up on the compass interface when near a tree.
• Data may become overwhelming if users contribute more comments than actual content (photos, audio recordings, notes).

Additional Changes Aside From Wireframes

• Users are able to input data whether or not they are at the location of a Story Tree. One scenario that was brought up during user testing was that if a friend had left for another country, he/she can reminisce with old friends by posting stories and tagging them to locations around their city back at home.
• There is no longer a lockout period for stories since the system has already constrained memory access to location. According to one user, “denying someone of their rights to access a memory is wrong.”

Version 1
Discovering the Service
One night, while looking for the latest and greatest photography app for his iPhone, Ethan discovers Story Forest. He quickly skims over the description.

Story Forest shares and replays your memories at locations where they were made within a city.

He also notices that the service allows him to import photos from his favorite photo storage service, Flickr. He downloads the app and imports his photos. Afterwards, the app lists the different cities that he has photographed in. With NYC being his current city, he sets it to his default location. He is then brought to a map that shows where his photos have been taken. There’s also an option to navigate photos by years. As he flicks through the timeline, he notices that the concentration of photos change from one part of the city to another.

Capturing a Memory
Ethan’s grandma has been suffering from dementia for the past several years and recently, her condition has gotten worse. The family has divided up the responsibility to keep her company throughout the week.

It was Sunday and it was Ethan’s turn to visit. During the visit, he turns on the app and takes a photo of her as she enjoys her favorite pastime meal, Vietnamese pho, which Ethan had picked up for her earlier. The app logs the location of the photo, associates it with the rest of the other photos taken within that location, and stores it into Story Forest’s online database.

Sharing a Memory
Ethan also has the option to associate an audio recording to the memory and/or share with others. Delighted with the response that his grandma had with the familiar food, he tags his family members to that memory. Since they don’t have Story Forest accounts yet, he sends them an email containing the memory notification (location and title) along with a link to the sign-up form.

The app then informs Ethan about the memory tree located at the nursing home. It has grown another branch as a result of the newly contributed memory. The app also reminds Ethan that once he accesses the memory, it will be unavailable to him until it re-emerges next year. In order to access the memory, he has to be 1) standing within the vicinity of where the photo was taken and 2) it has to be within an hour of the photo’s original time stamp. This again applies to photos that have re-emerged a year later.

Since the tree was already filled with memories (photos imported from the sign-up process earlier) from previous visits, Ethan doesn’t worry about the lack of memories that the tree has to offer.

Memory Recall
Around 7PM, Ethan is preparing to leave the nursing home as his grandma gets ready for bed. At 7:15PM, he makes his way out of the front lobby when all of a sudden his phone goes off. He looks at his phone and it’s a photo that he took last year of his grandma on that same day around that same time. It’s a picture of Harry with grandma when she was in a better mental and physical state.

Memory Response
While looking at the photo, he notices that there’s an option to leave an audio response. Slightly overtaken by the emotional state that he was in, he leaves a message about how proud he was about his grandma being able to hang in for so long especially in her current state. He also tags Harry to the memory.

Sign Up
A few days later, Harry receives an email from Story Forest informing him that there are two memories in Queens waiting for him. Out of curiosity, he signs up and downloads the app to his mobile device.

Since he didn’t have class that day, he decides to visit their grandma in Queens. Later that evening, as Harry tucks his grandma to bed, his phone alerts him that a memory has emerged from the memory tree. Harry accesses the memory and it turns out that it was a photo of him and grandma from a year ago. Upon reflection, he responds with an audio recording and a new sub-branch forms from the original branch signifying his response. A notification is then sent to everyone tagged to that memory chain, in this case, Ethan.

Growing a Memory Tree
The next weekend, Ethan visits his grandma again. It was nice out that day and so he decided to take her out for a short walk. Fortunately, there was a floral shop right down the street. He decides to walk her over to the store to purchase her a flower. After handing over the flower to his grandma, he notices her eyes light up. Filled with happiness, he decides to record the moment. He takes out his phone and photographs his grandma holding the flower. He also leaves behind a voice recording with a cameo appearance by his grandma. She briefly talks about why she chose the flower that she did. Since no other previous memories were recorded in the vicinity of the floral shop, a new memory tree was formed along with its first branch containing the photo and audio recording.

Forest Visualization
A month later, Ethan upgraded his iPhone to an iPhone 3GS. After syncing his new phone, he turns on the Story Forest app and notices a feature that he had not noticed before: augmented reality. Looking out his window from the 12th floor, he turns on the app. He then points the app out towards the city and sees a plethora of trees covering the cityscape. In the distance, beyond the East River, somewhere in Queens, stood a tall tree. Without a doubt, it was where his grandma’s nursing home was located.

How Augmented Story Forest Works
Memory trees take on several different states and reflect similar behaviors as those exhibited by the physical trees around us.

• Adult Solid Leaf – a memory that can be accessed.
• Adult Semi-Transparent Leaf – as a memory approaches the time that it was recorded, the leaf transitions from a semi-transparent state to a solid state.
• Child Leaf – a memory that is in the process of growing back after being accessed. It takes a year for a memory to grow back.

5 Years Later
Ethan’s grandma passed away after a short battle with cancer a few years ago. As he goes about the daily grind of working and living in New York City, he keeps his memories of her safely tucked away in the back of his mind, as he did with his baseball cards, comic books, and childhood toys back at his parent’s home in New Jersey.

One morning, during his commute from his new home in Astoria into Manhattan on the above ground N/Q/R line, he turns on the Story Forest app to see how his forest of memories have grown throughout the years. In the distance, he once again comes across the even taller tree located at his grandma’s nursing home.

Later that evening after work, he decides to head over to the nursing home with his brother. As they reach the front entrance, Ethan turns on the app. He then pans the phone over to the nursing home and notices the leaves on the tree fading in and out as they chronologically arrive and depart from when each memory was recorded. There are also memory trees lined up along the street where Ethan used to take short walks with his grandma. The two brothers take a seat at the bench located right outside of the nursing home and spend the rest of the evening reminiscing about their grandma. They were happy to know that even though she was no longer physically there with them, she was still there in their memories.

Version 2
The following user journey goes into a further detail via illustrations about planting new stories, adding moments to those stories, and eventually sharing them.

Version 3
Buckskin Bob is a modern day mountain man, living in New York City. He invites us to relieve with him, some of his favorite moments and locations in Story Forest. During his tour, he accomplishes the following:

1. Relieves previous moments (photos, audio) by accessing Story Trees at various locations
2. Uses the Augmented Forest feature to find his way around Story Forest
3. Uses the Compass feature when he’s within close vicinity of a Story Tree
4. Captures a moment (inputting a moment into a Story Tree)

Before heading out to shoot footage for the user journey, I did some tests at home to get an idea as to how all of this would work.

I also worked on storyboard sketches, which captures Bob’s tour through the city.

The following story is a rough version where I tested and played around with different stories, camera angles, use of props, music, and so on. Note: All iPhone screens seen in the video are not final. They are just placeholders.

Lessons Learned

• The most interesting sequence is the last part where our friend Buckshot Bob relives his experience with his companion leaving his side at Grand Central Station.
• Since I’m trying to keep this video down to at most 2:00, there needs to be a common thread that weaves through all three story points in order to get the point acros (refer to first bullet point).
• As mentioned by Liz Danzico (the Chair of our program), try to do all the explaining of the details/workings/etc. at the beginning. For example, the part where Buckshot Bob pulls a leaf off the tree and views the individual memory via iPhone gets a bit tedious and repetitive. Instead, do it once at the beginning and the remaining memory accesses will be implied.
• Filming user journeys require a lot of planning! I never realized how important it was to film a scene in a specific sequence so that all shots aligned with each other, especially when doing cuts later on. How detailed you ask? It’s like explaining to a robot how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, step by step.

Version 4
After a brief brainstorming session with fellow schoolmate and 1st year student (soon to be 2nd) Sera Koo, I came up with a general plan of attack for the next user journey. This updated version revolves around a character and their reminiscing about a loved one at various locations within the city.

Learning from my previous storyboard sketching, I created another set of sketches, but this time, using Post-Its. Storyboarding through this method allowed me to:

• Consider the essence of each shot within a 3″x3″ sheet of paper
• Collaborate with others on what does and doesn’t belong in each shot (Thanks Angela Huang, Clint Beharry, Evinn Quinn, and Jeff Kirsch)
• Break each scene down into finer details

After numerous days of shooting, 3 days to be exact, I filmed all the necessary shots. The final version went through multiple edits, mostly on getting the screens of the app to display crystal clear. Before introducing the video, I’d like to thank Sera Koo (Beth) and David Eng-Wong (Dave) for spending their sunny afternoons shooting this video, despite having to address their own finals.

And here we go, the 4th version of the Story Forest user journey. Here’s the abbreviated version, which will be included in my presentation.

This next one is the longer version showing off more of the functionality and will be displayed at my thesis space during the Open IXD ’11 show. Note: Sound not included in this one.

Before moving to wireframes, I created a flowchart for a majority of the user task flows for Story Forest. By going through this process, I was able to prioritize which interactions needed to be thoroughly tested. The flowchart also gave me a foundation as to what to include in my wireframes. You’ll also notice that the chart has been drastically simplified throughout the iterations.

Story Forest Flowchart V2.0 Latest Version
Story Forest Flowchart V1.3
Story Forest Flowchart V1.2
Story Forest Flowchart V1.1
Story Forest Flowchart V1.0

Prior to arriving to my final idea, I attempted IDEO’s 100 ideas/hour method and came up with the following. As for the remaining 84 ideas, well…

 

Logos
The following was a quick first round sketch of logos for Story Forest. Here is the list of values that I wanted the logo to embody:

• It’s not about the destination, but about the path in-between
• The forest is a companion throughout life
• The accumulation of memories provides a sense of reassurance for people seeking nostalgia

Final Demo
If you own an iPhone, visit the following URL on your device: http://storyforest.genelu.com/fd-rd5/. You will be prompted to add the link to your Home Screen. After adding the link to your home screen, click on the Story Forest icon and give the demo a whirl. Note: some of the functionality has been grayed out due to the limitations of the prototyping tool used.

Final Summary Site
The summary site introduces users to the app through the site’s content flow. By clicking on each leaf on the tree, users can navigate through the thesis and the purpose of the app. Towards the bottom of the page are some quotes pulled from my research along with the user journey. Other important links like the Process Capture document are available in the footer. And last, but not least, there’s an easter egg poking out on the right side of the screen. This is intended on getting users to stretch the width of their browser windows in order to reveal the parallax effect that I’ve included on the site.

Visit the Story Forest Summary Site.

Final Mockups
Below are the final screens for the Story Forest app.

Thesis in General
Before I started working on my thesis last year, I wanted to have an end product that was either tangible and/or fully functional. As we approach the final stretch of thesis work this week, none of those goals have been accomplished (for me at least). In the past month, I’ve come to terms with this. I’ve realized that thesis (and interaction design for that matter) isn’t always about creating something tangible or fully functional in the end. For this particular project, it was more about the journey, rather than the destination (is there always one?).

The great breadth of researching, concepting, and prototyping along with the insights provided by the prototypes gave me a better understanding as to what it meant be an interaction designer. It opened me up to the idea of failing quickly after many failed attempts. It opened me up to having more conversations with others about my project. It opened me up to the idea of not having to have something polished in the end. Polish on shit is still shit, right?

Thesis also gave me a better idea as what to expect from a thesis.

• Always expect your first idea to change. Always!
• Kill your darlings – don’t be married to an idea. Refer to the point #1.
• Comparing your thesis with someone else’s thesis is like comparing apples and oranges, unless both your projects involve fruits.
• Paul Pangaro asks the right questions that will most likely blow your mind and have you scramming back to the drawing board. With that said, if you want to figure out early on whether or not your project has any holes, ask Paul Pangaro.
• Despite the previous point, Paul Pangaro is still on your side.
• Always document whatever you do, even if it may seem tedious at the time. It pays off in the end.

Memories Live On
I’m relieved that I went back to the topic of memories. Ever since the diversion from memories to physical activities last year, I was lost and lacked motivation in what I was doing. Before I headed further down the path of physical activities, Paul Pangaro was able to reel me back into what I genuinely cared about, the preservation of memories. Story Forest was my introduction into the world of memories and although it might not have directly addressed dementia patients, it informed me of the direction that I should be heading in.

And Finally, Thanks To

• Jen Bove for being enthusiastic and motivating when I needed it the most
• Rob Faludi for guiding me down the path of memories
• Paul Pangaro for asking the most thought-provoking questions
• Liz Danzico for the calm reassurance that everything will be fine
• David Eng-Wong for helping me with all my prototyping, user journeys, and discussions about memories
• Sera Koo for encouraging me from start to finish
• William Lu for all those academic talks on memory
• David Hou for lending me his awesome camera (30FPS, yes please!)
• Derek Chan for lending me his tripod late one night
• Clint Beharry for coming out that one night to Starbucks when the studio was closed and talking about how to visualize data in a meaningful manner

1. Debord, Guy. Theory of the Dérive, translated by Ken Knabb. Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006.
2. Mod, Craig. Post Artifact Book Design Thinking. A talk held at the School of VISUAL ARTS’ MFA in Interaction Design Spring Lecture Series, New York City, New York, January 19, 2011.
3. Krulwich, Robert (Host), Abumrad, Jad (Host). “Memory and Forgetting” [Podcast], RadioLab, June 7, 2007, accessed April 27, 2011, http://www.radiolab.org/2007/jun/07/
4. Carey, Benedict. “For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving,” New York Times, September 4, 2008, accessed April 27, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/science/05brain.html5. Senior, Jennifer. “Is Urban Loneliness a Myth?,” New York Magazine, November 23, 2008, accessed April 27, 2011, http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/
5. Kahneman, Daniel. “The riddle of experience vs. memory: Daniel Kahneman on TED.com,” TED, March 1, 2010, accessed April 27, 2011, http://blog.ted.com/2010/03/01/the_riddle_of_e/
6. Krakovsky, Marina. “Nostalgia: Sweet Remembrance,” Psychology Today, May 26, 2010, accessed April 27, 2011, http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200605/nostalgia-sweet-remembrance

Related Links

1. Jonathan Harris’ Today Project http://number27.org/today/
2. William Lu http://thequantumlobechronicles.blogspot.com/
3. Craig Mod, “Embracing the Digital Book” http://craigmod.com/journal/ebooks/