Remembering Future Intentions

Intention

My overall vision is to get people thinking about their intentions and how to design a solution that challenges them to better engage with these commitments in a more meaningful way. We often make decisions such as “this year I want to be more present with my family and friends”, but then we don’t follow through. To a certain extent, this is the result of forgetfulness, and we need a better way to remember these moments. On the other hand, they don’t completely go away and they may reside in the back of our minds until we make some progress on our resolutions. This may cause some people to feel like they are “drowning” in a sea of unkept self-promises.

Prototype

I designed a rough, wizard of oz’d prototype that comprised of a clear case with an “emoji” stand in the middle, paired with a mobile app. The emoji in the clear case is meant to show a water tank that has a type of screen in the center depicting an emoji. The idea is that users can enter their intentions that they want to capture on the mobile app. As these resolutions pile up and the user does not make progress, the tank fills with water as if the emoji is slowly drowning. The emoji’s expression slowly changes in response to the rising water. This is meant to portray the idea that our forgotten intentions can accumulate while we are not paying attention, and the next thing we know, we find ourselves overwhelmed and drowning in a lot of unfinished business.

The case with the emoji was made of simple paper, foam board, plastic, and a small canvas for the base. The mobile application prototype was drafted in Sketch and then the flow mocked up using Framer X.  I added a simple "hamburger" menu to quickly depict the two extreme examples in the prototype which were "Happy" and "Dead".

Precedents

Prior research began in the exploration of the digital mind topic. One of my biggest questions through-out this process was, “are perfect digital memories really that important or valuable if there is no biological ‘tether’ in a person’s mind?” I concluded that while digital memories could be really helpful for remembering certain events or previous learnings, the point of memories is not to simply remember them. We get something from these memories that help us grow into who we are as people and help us project our aspirations for the future. Researchers Abigail J. Sellen and Steve Whittaker in “Beyond Total Capture: A Constructive Critique of Lifelogging”, argue that “digital archives may be generally less valuable than people would hope.” They also point out that "people have greater difficulty remembering what they intend to do in the future (prospective memory)" rather than remembering the past. I decided to focus on delivering that particular value of facilitating prospective memory.

Process

My initial idea was to create a mug that could capture a user’s verbal intention. When lifted, the user’s intention would project via speakers on the mug. The purpose was to remind the user of their commitment and not let their resolve get lost in the day to day.

The issue with this idea is that A) it would be annoying and impractical and B) it did not challenge or provoke the observer in any way. So, I asked myself, “What are you trying to say?” At first, I thought I wanted to talk about resolutions and how we are constantly asked to assess our futures (“What do you want to be when you grow up?”) and how that weighs us down. But after getting feedback, I realized that these commitments actually keep building up and it can feel like a room “caving in”.    

Open Questions and Challenges

With this exploration, I started to really question our memories and consider what is truly valuable to capture and remember and what should continue to be forgotten. At first, I thought in terms of how our brains have evolved over thousands of years to develop the most advanced filtering mechanism for information. And so, my first question was: why do I need to remember all of it? This resulted in me focusing on the things I have a hard time remembering which are intentions. I was also really interested in exploring collective intentions, and how groups make internal commitments with each other.

On the other hand, I would like to explore digital memory in the other direction. For the memories my brain filtered out, is there still a way that data can be useful and provide some sort of value even if that value is not for me? And when I say value, I mean provide some sort of social value that pushes for positive good in the world. If the data is already being collected and stored somewhere, it may be worth considering potential use cases for that information in a way that can benefit others.    

Reflection

I learned that while it may be easy to find interesting areas of exploration, it is a completely different endeavor to mold that idea into something that truly makes a statement and really challenges someone to think. It is very important to define exactly how and what you want people think or takeaway before you start generating ideas. This is much more helpful for informing design ideas and decisions. Next time around, I need to make sure I dedicate time to defining what thoughts I want to inspire in others and what I want users to really take away from my design.

I also spent a lot of time working on the visual screens for my mobile app which is not inherently bad. That being said, I realized that I should have put more effort into designing the pitch and how to demonstrate my design. Demonstrating the design in terms of a story is more effective that simply giving an explanation.

Attribution and References

Emojis: Background vector created by freepik - www.freepik.com</a>