Design Considerations for Collective Remembering

This paper identifies four design issues for Collective Remembering (CR). We first review the current main areas where CR is being explored, namely organisational memory, sociable sharing and reflective sharing, and for each identify key challenges. We apply Clark’s (1996) Common Ground framework for communication to understand these different aspects of sharing. We use this framework to identify factors affecting collective remembering – specifically goals of sharing, relation between the sharing participants, that nature of the materials being shared and the situation in which sharing occurs. INTRODUCTION There has recently been much technological interest in developing digital tools to support memory. Both the US and UK research councils have launched Grand Challenges (LifeLog, Memories for Life) to create digital archives of one’s life. An important recent focus for this research has been the high-profile Microsoft Memex project (originally known as MyLifeBits), which has developed an infrastructure for archiving vast archives of personal multimedia data, as well as tools for indexing and retrieving this (Gemmell et al., 2002, Wood et al., 2004). That work builds on technologies developed at Xerox EuroParc for creating and accessing digital diaries (Lamming and Flynn, 1994, Eldridge et al., 1992, Newman et al., 1991). More recently, a large number of prototypes have developed to support various aspects of personal memory: including images and video (Rodden and Wood, 2003, Mann et al., 2005), medical information (Cheng et al., 2003, Malavolti et al., 2004), speech (Dickie et al., 2004, Vemuri et al., 2004, Hayes et al., 2004), ‘experience-mining’ tools (Pentland, 1998, Rhodes, 1997), and reminding tools (Marmasse and Schmandt, 2000, Stifelman, 1993). But most of this research has focused on individual memory, where people are trying to reconstruct events from their own past, often in the context of work or productivity goals. Less attention has been paid to collective contexts where the emphasis is on sharing memories and experiences, in the service of social or cultural goals. While there is a vast psychological literature on individual remembering, much less is known about collective memory processes. What has been done tends to focus on workrelated instances of collective memory. For instance, studies have shown that groups can be more effective than individuals working alone when trying to remember an event (Stephenson et al., 1983). There is also evidence of distributed effort: group members build up knowledge of how expertise is distributed among different team members, allowing them to increase overall team efficiency by deferring responsibility for remembering to the most qualified individual. But, like many other social activities, collective remembering can also have negative effects; team members can engage in social loafing – where less active members rely on others to bear the brunt of group memory demands (Weldon and Bellinger 1997). Rather less research has been carried out in other contexts such as collective remembering and its implications for social and cultural identity (Wertsch, 2002). This paper first reviews areas where collective remembering has been investigated, and then uses this analysis to identify general design issues for collective remembering. CONTEXTS FOR COLLECTIVE REMEMBERING There have been three main contexts for exploring technologies for collective remembering. Sharing Work Knowledge and Expertise This involves collective memories in the work context, exemplified by organisational memory applications such as 1 One exception to this is the area of organizational memory which aims to develop tools to aid collective recall in a work context.