FMP - Ideation and Experimentation

Different directions

At this stage, I got several directions to continue.

Based on the research I got, I was first thinking about designing an experience of memories: People will be exploring the space without eyes but with others' varied memories towards the space. This one is more towards experience design, and it stresses on how different we all experience a particular space.

The other one is more about toolkits for memory collection. One possible direction under this is towards senses. Mor suggested me that since lots of people mentioned sounds in the research, maybe I could record all the sounds, for example, in the particular space and create some toolbox which could allow people to reconstruct the space in a new way that fits their memory. While the other one is to build a recording and experiencing tool using all the main elements I synthesised from the research.

For first one, I researched about exhibition design and got some reference from the tutorials, such as Foley Artist, an installation about sound experience, and non-places, talking about shared and semi-shared spaces. But I ended up choosing the second direction because I found more design opportunities in it. Since my research has different elements including stories, sounds and smell, I did not want to choose one of them and got away with others, either. Thus, I continued to think about how can I build a toolkit combining the elements I found out in the research.

One of the ideas and the challenge

I first got some Lego ideas. I designed different modules for people to build their own memory map/model. For example, there are sound modules, smell modules and story modules in different sizes and they can be snapped together to create a unique memory map.

"Creating your space memory map using modules" idea

Then I started to design each of the modules. I did a lot of research about how people visualised sounds and smell (see below). Then I met the challenge of capturing the smell. There are existing technologies to capture smell, like printing a photo with smell, or record the smell using the phone, but they are limited in types, and I did not want to look into the technology side of capturing. I also looked into design work related with smell by Omer Polak, but I was still deeply stuck.

Visualise sound

Visualise smell

A quick test of capturing the sound and smell

After a tutorial with Mor, I was suggested to start from a very specific place that have very distinct sight, sounds and smell, and a swimming pool is a good start. It has the smell of chlorine and it is echoy. It also has the texture of water. I managed to borrow a professional recording device from school, and got some materials from the shop, trying to capture the sound and smell and recreate the memories.

I created 3D sounds using the recordings from the swimming pool and built a prototype to mimic the smell of chlorine. I did a test to see whether the sound and smell can still recreate the memories of the swimming pool. While the result was not performing well. The smell was more like hospital and the wearing of mask was not a natural way of smelling, which made the participant uncomfortable.

Doing the test

Take a step back

It occurred to me that I had been too focused on the senses and was getting further away from my topic, space and memory. Although I tried to combine all these elements together to build a tool, it turned out that each one of the elements can actually be a topic itself. It was not possible to do all of them, and choosing only one of them to develop also makes little sense. Thus, I took a step back and looked at my research findings again.

From the research I found that since the space serves as a trigger of memory, it cannot be separated from remembering. At the same time, people do not really want to remember the space, but what inside the space. Most of the people are overlooking the importance of the space. This makes me to think how I can lay stress on space and connect memories, space and people closer. What if I can attach an emotional layer to space and make it a live narrator?

People have rich memories towards the space, but they lack appropriate places for them to put and review the memories. What if the space can just be the real repository for the corresponding memories? What if people can experience the memory just at where it happened?

I was then inspired by a common thing happened during schools – when students change their classrooms, they will often find marks on tables left by past-year students. Sometimes the marks may also be meaningful sentences. This fact is quite interesting, because people are connected together across time unconsciously through things left in the same space. It brings up another what-if question, what if we can literally leave some memories in the space for future review, just as leaving some physical marks? Furthermore, since people have such varied memories towards one same shared space, what if the memories can be shared across time?

Design Concept

Since space is static but people and memories are constantly changing, I got the idea of using augmented reality technology. AR is now capable of recognising surfaces, objects and even space, and it can be well-combined with the idea. There is also “augmented reality cloud” technology rising recently, which enables information to be shared and tied to specific locations. The AR Cloud is a real-time 3D (or spatial) map of the world, overlayed onto the real world. It enables information and experiences to be augmented, shared, and tied to specific physical locations to occur and persist across apps and devices.

These together, shaped my initial idea – Memory Space – an augmented reality mobile application to leave and share memories in where they happens and review them when back to the same space; It turns the space into a live narrator. Meanwhile, it can connect the people using the same space together by relating the space with shared memories across time. As mentioned above, here “space” is limited to indoor spaces, especially classrooms or studio spaces inside schools as examples. Target users will be people using these spaces, and possible scenarios can be leaving memories in the space before graduating and reviewing them while back to the school; or exploring and interacting with shared memories in the space.