Project Brief: Making Memories Memorable

Introduction
"Memory is a man's real possession...In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor."
Alexander Smith
Memory works on a short-term level (e.g. remembering to buy the milk, take out the trash, that fact for the 147 midterm) and on a grand scale (e.g. preserving our grandparents' keepsakes for posterity, understanding the memories of our town, city, country, or culture).

Digital devices such as mobile phones are perfectly placed to complement our memory.  They are always present in our pocket, loaded with digital memory, and just waiting for the right software. As Don Norman states,  “The power of the unaided human mind is vastly overrated.”  However, they usually go so far as to help us with shopping lists and to-do's.  How can mobile devices enhance the memory of their user or their community?  What are the aids that you can provide to let humans do what they do best — think critically, reflect, create — and offload the “facts” to technology?

Your Mission
Design a mobile experience to enhance our sense of history and memory in the long-term.

What Success Will Look Like
Successful projects will follow a user-centered design process to create an experience that improves our long-term memories.

Design Inspiration

1. How could you give everyone a photographic memory?
2. We all come from distinct backgrounds; how could we share our collective family histories?
3. What if physical places had memories and you could access them?
4. What if we could use our technologies to gain different perspectives on a single historical event?
5. How could you eliminate the problem of remembering people's names and information about them every time you meet?
6. Could we *share* memories easily using our mobile phones?
7. Can we add richness to our memories with audio, video, handwritten notes, or photos?
8. Could we enhance our memory of consumed goods as a means of changing our future consuming behavior?