Brief: Design an experience that externalises the nature of memory
Team: Eric Dodd, Sanya Nayar, Vanessa Van, Binru Liu
Memory is like storage which keeps our knowledge and experience of our lives. People cannot summary their works they did or what plan to do in the future. Moreover, people cannot learn anything without memory. Memory has three separate stages: sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term storage, and these three stages have different encoding ways. Our group planned to externalise the process of memory.
Research Methods
“Artefact Analysis” and “Directed Storytelling” were used in our project. At first, we researched the process of memory and when people need to find something in their memory. By analysing some activities that had a relationship with memory such as presentation, dream, and working plan. After that, We focused on exploring people’s dreams and found an insight that people always recalled their interesting or impressive dreams. Sometimes, people also made a “dream diary” to record their dreams which they felt impressive. We decided to build an experience of the memory of the dream.
Directed Storytelling
We used the directed storytelling method in our research firstly. We interviewed 10 persons in total and collected their interesting or weird dreams. From these interviews, we found the key objects which appeared in their dreams. They told us the key objects could guide them to describe their dreams, and they would try to find the key objects firstly if they want to recall their unique dreams. Also, we recorded these objects which can be used in artefact analysis later. We tried to make their dreams visually accessible.
Findings
After listening to the different dreams, we realised that they always told the story around the key objects. We also knew they might recall their dreams when they get some information about their key objects through the interviews.
Artefact Analysis
Our group decided to do artefact analysis with the key objects from the interesting dreams. We classified the 16 objects based on magical objects, nature objects, cultural objects and animals and analysed them in 5 areas: material qualities, interaction, social qualities, location and historical aspects.
We provided an example of magical objects and animals.
The first one is a fly broom which is as same as Harry Potter’s. The participant mentioned that he could remember his interesting dream when he sees the big broom or watches the Harry Potter films. The normal broom could not trigger his memory of the dream.
The second artefact is the snake which appears in two participants’ dreams. One person said she could remember the dream with a snake because she made a fortune the next day. In China, people always say one will be rich when he has a dream about a snake. It was a very interesting phenomenon which belonged to semantic coding. People use semantic coding (by meaning) to produce long-term memory sometimes.
Outcome
According to the artefact analysis and directed storytelling, we create an experience for the class. We visualised the key objects of dreams by reliefs, not text. The reliefs had the characteristics, texture and shape of the key objects.
Finally, we made a relief book with some key objects which were from interviewees’ dream.
Everyone could touch and see the reliefs under the soft music. They tried to recall their dreams through the interaction with the key objects. The reliefs also made people remember other things. For example, one person remembered the most boring football game in his life when he touched the football relief.
Project feedback & Reflection
We received some valuable feedback from our classmates and tutors. They thought our prototype is fantastic. One of them mentioned that the details in the reliefs were mimic. She recalled her impressive dream about snake at once when she touched the “scale” of the snake relief. The relief triggered her sensory memory. They suggested us to develop the idea about “dream dairy further”. Many people like to record their dreams, but they do not want just to write them down. They think that reading text has no experience or process of recalling the memory. Someone enjoys the experience of recalling the memory. Memory is a complex activity for processing information, and it is also a basement of some high-level psychological activities. We should research it deeper.
Reference
Cohen, D.B. (1974) ‘Toward a theory of dream recall’, Psychological bulletin, 81(2), pp. 138–154. doi: 10.1037/h0037616.
National Geographic Society. (2020) Cultural Memory. [online] Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/cultural-memory/ (Accessed 26 December 2020).
Penelope A. Lewis (2013) The secret world of sleep: the surprising science of the mind at rest. Palgrave Macmillan.
