We suck at reliving memories through screens, fix it designers!

You probably have been to Paris and walked over the Champs-Élysées, visited the Arc de Triomphe and climbed the Eiffel Tower. Most likely you have bought a little plastic and way too overpriced model of the Eiffel Tower. Which currently stands somewhere in your house collecting dust. Once in a while you pick up that plastic Eiffel Tower and it instantly brings back memories of that time in Paris. The little figurine has become a carrier of experiences and emotions. This suggests that physicality is an important aspect in reliving memories. Can we still create vivid memories in a world where they are created through touchscreens?

Our memories have become this vast collection of ungraspable digital visuals diluted by irrelevant content

Due to the rise of smartphones our curated physical memories are transformed into a big collection of digital representatives. Screens are ambiguous surfaces where we interact with a diversity of content. There’s no connection between the actual experience and the digital representative. Memories are just one swipe away of becoming deleted. Pictures of a holiday with your lover are right next to pictures of Grumpy Cat and that price tag of the dress you really want. In other words our memories have become this vast collection of ungraspable digital visuals diluted by irrelevant content. All experienced through the same screen, with the same interactions.

Although we are able to collect and store more memories than ever, digital design has yet to develop a proper design language for this. A design language where we can experience memories in the same powerful way we as experience them by picking up objects. With interactions, sounds and tactility applicable to that moment in time. But due to the ambiguity of screens and mobile devices this is difficult and perhaps impossible.

There is ‘emotional design’ which focusses on empathic structures in webdesign in order to captivate the user and create a higher convergence. This is the same for minimal design and Google’s material design. They all focus on getting the user from A to B without losing him or her along the way. These design philosophies/visions/methods all bring something new to the table. Yet none of them are focussing on creating unique moments through tailored interactions. It is about what you are experiencing now and not what you have experienced in the past.

In this context of finding proper digital paradigms it is important to understand how we relive memories digitally. Thankfully there is research being done to understand this. Elise van den Hoven, for example, focusses on ‘Materialising Memories’, how design and curation of digital content can lead to a better experience of memories. Designers need to step in aswel.

Currently there are only a handful of designers who are wondering how to create a digital narrative of our memories. Their efforts are mainly focussing on explicit actions the user needs to take, like: selecting photos, adding text and ranking the entry. Although it is interesting it is just a first step.

So are we able to vividly re-experience our digital memories through our screens? Maybe. Perhaps the re-experience of our memories is evolving together with our technology. Perhaps not. We do not know. Therefore it is important to investigate and explore this direction in order to make sure the digital representatives of our memories will be as intense as our tactile ones.