Original Article

The Cue Is KeyDesign for Real-Life Remembering

Elise van den Hoven1,2 and Berry Eggen2

1Faculty of Design, Architecture & Building, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia,2Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

Abstract. This paper aims to put the memory cue in the spotlight. We show how memory cues are incorporated in the area of interactiondesign. The focus is on external memory cues – cues that exist outside the human mind but have an internal effect on memory reconstruction.Examples of external cues include people, environments, and things, where the latter are most relevant for the aim of this paper since these cuescan be incorporated in designs. This paper makes a dual contribution to research: (1) it provides insights into how memory research informs thedesign of devices to facilitate personal memory recall; and (2) by taking a design perspective, it raises questions about memory cues as part ofreal-life remembering to inform psychological memory research. Since memory theory inspires design and both fields would benefit fromcollaboration, we would like these questions to be an inspiration for future memory research, in particular targeting external memory cues.

Keywords: memory cues, personal remembering, augmented memory systems, interaction design, design research

‘‘a more complex interaction between storedinformation and certain features of the retrieval

environment seems to be involved in converting apotential memory into conscious awareness’’

(Tulving & Thomson, 1973, pp. 352–353)

Memory cuing is concerned with the bringing to conscious-ness of an unconscious state, and is in itself a complexinteraction, as mentioned by Tulving and Thomson(1973). According to the Oxford online dictionary (2013),a cue is ‘‘a circumstance or piece of information which aidsthe memory in retrieving details not recalled spontane-ously.’’ This broad definition shows that a retrieval cuecan come in many shapes and sizes and that the cue andthe context of cuing are important. This paper aims at get-ting a better understanding of what a cue is and whether acue or cuing can be influenced through design. The focuswill be on external memory cues, which are physical or dig-ital cues in a tangible embodiment with an internal effect(as part of this complex interaction) on memory reconstruc-tion. Examples of possible external memory cues includepeople, environments, and things. Things (or part of things)are most relevant for the aim of this paper since thesepotentially can be designed themselves. Instances of theseexternal tangible cues can be completely personal andseemingly infinitely diverse, for example, a birthday giftfrom a close friend, a heirloom piece, a souvenir, the colorof a fabric, or the traditional holiday photo album.

This paper will be about personal memories, as in auto-biographical and episodic memories (for an overview, seeBerntsen & Rubin, 2012), which can be retrieved voluntar-ily and involuntarily (Berntsen, 2009). More specifically,

the focus is on everyday memory recall, which we defineas the remembering of autobiographical memories takingplace in real life, in the real world, as opposed to remem-bering taking place in laboratory conditions. These labora-tory experiments are very useful for studying one or twovariables in depth, and these often involve the learning ofartificial material (such as word lists) in artificial situationswith a homogeneous subject population (typically students)(e.g., Chu & Downes, 2002; Rubin, Groth, & Goldsmith,1984; Vaidya & Gabrieli, 2000). The often-used ‘‘freerecall’’ paradigm is not as free as it sounds, in that subjectsare given the task to recall specific information and just likethe ‘‘cued recall’’ paradigm the items-to-be-recalled arerelated to recently presented material that had to bememorized.

This is very different from our everyday remembering,which can happen anywhere, anytime, by anyone, andthrough the use of any possible retrieval cue. The memoriesrecalled can occur in all their richness, it can closely resem-ble the real experience and is not limited to rememberingwords. This everyday remembering is a truly free type ofrecall, which can happen both voluntarily and involuntarily.

Memory cues, and the process of memory cuing, areimportant but not yet well understood. That is why thesehave been and still are highly relevant topics in memoryresearch. The research focus, however, is predominantlyon the psychology behind it all; therefore, this paper takesa different perspective, namely the one from design, and inparticular interaction design. The main assumption behindthis design perspective is that the presentation of memorycues and the way in which this is done has an effect onremembering. Therefore, what is interesting for design con-cerns not so much the internal cues but the external ones

Zeitschrift f�r Psychologie 2014; Vol. 222(2):110–117DOI: 10.1027/2151-2604/a000172

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instead: how are these currently used and presented in thereal world. Ultimately we aim to use this knowledge todesign tools that support everyday personal remembering.The term supporting can be interpreted in many ways, aswill become clear when examples of earlier work are listedin the Cues in Design section. In general, supporting con-cerns the personal remembering experience, for example,communicating about or sharing memories with other peo-ple. This is opposed to research that focuses on improvingremembering skills, such as increasing the validity andaccuracy of memories.

After more than 10 years of experience in the area ofdesigning to support remembering, the authors have con-cluded that one of the keys to success in terms of facilitat-ing and supporting remembering is the memory cue, inparticular understanding what it is and what the potentialfor design is. The focus in this paper is not the memorycuing process, which would include for example, depthof processing, availability, accessibility, attention, discrim-inability, and the related fields of distributed and extendedcognition, but instead the focus is on the memory cuesthemselves. The appearance, presentation, and perceptionof memory cues seem rather unexplored and are importantfor supporting everyday remembering. The next sectionwill give some highlights of the cognitive psychology liter-ature on memory cues, which by no means attempts to becomplete. This will be used as the starting point from whichto explain the design perspective on memory cues in latersections.

Cues in Cognitive Psychology

The terms memory trigger or memory prompt are used assynonyms for the term memory cue. Despite the fact thatmemory cues are very important for the remembering pro-cess and are studied in many ways, it appears to be difficultto find a proper definition. Assumedly this is the case,because memory cues (and perhaps the memory cuing pro-cess in general) are not yet well understood. A memory cuecan loosely be described as: a piece of information, a pieceof mind, or an experience, which facilitates memory recall.

However, most studies providing knowledge aboutmemory cues are not focusing on the presented cue as such,but on studying the recall capabilities of the subjects. Theserecall studies often use language as the cue and the to-be-learned material. The focus is on newly learned material,which has no relation to the everyday real-world memoriesof the participants. For example, subjects have to recallrecently learned lists of words with or without the presenceof a memory cue (e.g., see Eich, 1980, for an overview).This cue is often presented in the shape of a written orprinted word on paper, in the same style as the earlier pre-sented lists. Sometimes cues are presented multiple times(cue repetition, e.g., Morris, Bransford, & Franks, 1977), ordo not stem from the to-be-remembered-items lists (extralistcuing, e.g., Tulving & Thomson, 1973) but are still presentedcongruently, in the same modality and presentation style.

Examples of memory studies that are more relevant tothe work described in this paper, include the use of real-world memory cues, such as spoken memory cues that peo-ple also used when they are not part of a memory study. Forexample, a study on cross-cuing conducted by Harris, Keil,Sutton, Barnier, and McIlwain (2011) describes how dyads,two people, cue each other in everyday conversations.Moving from real-world written musical language to real-world performed music, a musician also uses cues whenperforming a rehearsed piece (Chaffin, Logan, & Begosh,2009). Since making music requires several types of mem-ory, musicians combine several types of internal ‘‘perfor-mance cues.’’ Chaffin et al. (2009) identified structural,expressive, interpretive, and basic motor cues. Anotherstudy (Herz, 2004) compared different modalities of seem-ingly generic cues to trigger museum visitor’s memories.The cues included visual (5-second movies), auditory(5-second sound clips), and olfactory (sealed containerswith air flowing through an opening for sniffing) versionsof popcorn, fresh-cut-grass, and campfire. The findingsshowed that olfactory cues resulted in more emotionaland evocative memories, but there were no differencesfound in terms of vividness and specificity across the differ-ent modalities.

All these examples focus on people using memory cuesin the real world, and together they provide a nice exampleof the multitude of potential memory cues, which can occurin an everyday situation.

The cues mentioned before show an array of potentialcues, which still lacks one, we believe, important category.The focus of this paper is on external memory cues and inparticular on physical or tangible cues present in the envi-ronment of the rememberer, such as objects and other peo-ple. Some work has been done focusing on children, inwhich case these tangible memory cues came in the shapeof small physical objects, such as archeological tools(Hudson & Fivush, 1991) and magician’s accessories (Pipe& Wilson, 1994). In addition, a study was done comparingmedia from an activity, including self-created objects (vanden Hoven & Eggen, 2009).

So far, the memory cuing studies reviewed focus on dif-ferent types of cues and their effectiveness in triggeringautobiographical events from episodic memory. The wayin which the retrieval of autobiographical memories hap-pens is another relevant topic for everyday remembering.Two types of retrieval can be distinguished: voluntaryand involuntary. Voluntary autobiographical memory is dif-ferent from involuntary autobiographical memory (IAM),in that voluntary retrieval is conscious and intentional,where involuntary retrieval is conscious but unintentional(Berntsen, 2009). Voluntary retrieval is often described asa cyclic, goal-directed search process, where involuntaryretrieval is not yet understood. Both voluntary and involun-tary processes are relevant for everyday remembering, asfocused on in this paper. According to Berntsen (2009) cuesfor voluntary autobiographical remembering include puresensory experiences and feeling states, but these do notseem effective for involuntary autobiographical remember-ing. Instead, external cues seem to be used and to be effec-tive (e.g., Ball, Mace, & Corona, 2008; Berntsen, 2009),

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and received attention in studies, which makes the researchon IAM particularly relevant for the focus of this paper.External cues are defined (Berntsen, 2009) as ‘‘present inthe physical surroundings,’’ as opposed to internal cues‘‘only present in thoughts,’’ and mixed cues ‘‘a combinationof external and internal features.’’ A review (Berntsen,2009) of multiple studies into IAMs and cues showed sim-ilar results: most IAMs had external cues, than mixed cues,than internal cues, and the smallest number had no identi-fiable cues. To get a better understanding of the actual cuesBerntsen and Hall (as presented in Berntsen 2009) catego-rized self-reported commonalities between IAMs and theretrieval context. It turned out that the most mentionedcue category was specific objects (17%), followed by per-sonal life themes, activities, persons, and locations. Alsoin the nostalgia research (e.g., Wildschut, Sedikides, &Arndt, 2006) tangibles were listed as a separate categoryof objects. This shows the importance of looking furtherinto tangible memory cues.

It is important to realize that for external cues to have aneffect on recall they have to be distinct, present, and recur-rent in our lives, all in a salient manner (Berntsen, 2009).External cues will therefore be highly personal, dependingon personal significance and on an individual’s environ-ment and activities. Apparently, IAMs typically come tomind when someone is engaged in activities that do notdemand a lot of attention (Berntsen, 2009), such as day-dreaming, relaxing, or exercising.

Summarizing, external and tangible memory cues havenot received much attention in research to date, but thesetangible memory cues seem very powerful in particularfor everyday remembering in the real world.

Design Perspective

The previous section highlighted some of the work relatedto the understanding of external memory cues in cognitivepsychology. This section will briefly explain what thedesign perspective is and how this is different from the psy-chology perspective, before moving onto the next section,which will give an overview of external memory cue workin the area of design.

As mentioned in the Introduction, this paper tries toconvey a design perspective on the area of designing tosupport everyday remembering. Design is a large field,which ranges from applied areas, such as fashion and furni-ture design, to theoretical areas, such as design theory. Thispaper narrows design down to an area that focuses on thedesign of products and systems that involve media that peo-ple use in everyday life as memory cues. Nowadays, thesememory cues involve tangible and intangible cues, such asprinted and digital photographs. Incorporating the digitalinto physical products is done in the field of interactiondesign. This subfield of design focuses on interactive

products, that is, products that contain embedded electron-ics that respond to people’s actions (Rogers, Sharp, &Preece, 2011). Interaction design originates from the olderfield of Human-Computer Interaction, which came intoexistence with the appearance of computers. Nowadays,however, electronics and computing power can be embed-ded into almost anything, from smaller and less complexproducts, such as jewelry and clothing, to homes, cars, toys,and household appliances. The field of interaction designdeals with the conception, implementation, and evaluationof these interactive products or systems.

Through the creation of future not-yet-existing interac-tive products, interaction design can be used in design-ori-ented research (Fallman, 2003) in order to generateknowledge. This means that the priority is to learn throughand by designing for people and, in this case, their remem-bering-related needs. The aim is not to create the optimalproduct for production or sales. In reality both pathways,research versus production, often have contradictingrequirements and the products created for research purposesdo not go beyond the prototyping stage.

Recent developments in interaction design research(van den Hoven et al., 2007) have shown the importanceof designing products within everyday, challenging con-texts of use, and the focus is shifting from ease-of-use tothe user experience. A user experience is defined as ‘‘a per-son’s perceptions and responses that result from the use oranticipated use of a product, system or service’’ (ISO stan-dard 9241-210). This includes someone’s emotions, physi-cal and psychological responses and behaviors, before,during, and after the interaction with an interactive productor system. Remembering can also be the resulting experi-ence from a person’s interaction with a product or system.The design of such an interactive product or system can bespecifically aimed toward the facilitation or elicitation ofsuch a remembering experience.1 Having a rememberingexperience is not necessarily the same as reliving the origi-nal event, it could also entail that the activity whichincludes remembering, for example the sharing of memo-ries with others, is an experience in itself. Facilitated orelicited remembering experiences are almost always tar-geted to be pleasant.

Since interaction design research focuses on the creationof new, interactive products for complicated, everyday lifeenvironments, the measures of success include the creationof a working prototype and the use of that prototype inqualitative studies. Since prototypes are often not devel-oped enough to be used over prolonged periods of timeand design researchers lack the background and skills, itis difficult to measure the impact of these products andtechnologies on the actual encoding or retrieving of some-one’s personal memories. However, this is the ultimate goalof designing for remembering, which can only be achievedthrough collaboration with memory experts. That is whythis paper aims to address the community of memoryexperts and tries to show the relevance of design, but also

1 This should not be confused with the use of the term experience in memory literature, where it signifies the event that results in a memory,for example, Conway (2009). This paper focuses on the experience someone has when remembering something.

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the complicatedness of this area of research. Even thoughinteraction design in itself is already multidisciplinary andneeds input from design and engineering to create artifacts,it also requires input from experts in the application area, inthis case memory. Apart from the combination of disci-plines and the differences in measures of success used,another challenging factor is the combination of analysisand synthesis, in a typically iterative and flexible designprocess. All of this combined makes it possible to applytheory and knowledge about human memory to the areaof designing for everyday personal remembering.

Qualitatively studying everyday remembering in thearea of interaction design, as described above, often resultsin some differences compared to, for example, quantitativelaboratory experiments.

One important difference is that design studies are oftenbased on people’s real personal memories, or ‘‘extraexperi-mentally acquired memories’’ (free adaption of ‘‘extraex-perimentally acquired associations’’ by Bilodean, 1965, asseen in Tulving & Thomson, 1973). Those memories havepersonal meaning and value, people might have reserva-tions to share them and the researchers often cannot (andwill not) judge the validity, the time of encoding, and theamount of rehearsal or processing over time. In addition,these memories can be very rich in the ways they are expe-rienced and expressed, certainly when compared to remem-bering lists of recently learned words.

Related to this difference is the use of memory cues par-ticipants bring themselves and that, as a consequence, theresearchers assume will cue their personal everyday mem-ories. These memory cues can be self-created or collectedand come in a variety of materials, shapes, and sizes, rang-ing from photographs, to maps, to inherited pieces, toeveryday objects, to digital music files (e.g., van den Hoven& Eggen, 2008; Petrelli, van den Hoven, & Whittaker,2009).

Because these everyday personal memories and cues areoften not controlled in any way, at times the cues are noteven presented explicitly, it is also not controlled what peo-ple recall during the consequent studies. Adding this all upmakes it clear why the focus in these studies typically is noton what someone remembers, but on whether and how wecan support them to remember, judged through subjectiveself-reported experiences. The reported memories are oftenused to give qualitative examples of the knowledge gained.

This also explains the different uses of the term remem-bering. Where in cognitive psychology memory is studiedwith the idea of trying to understand the human brain andits workings, in design remembering is seen as an individ-ual’s activity with a personal goal or function. Even thoughit has been tried to bring psychology memory theory intodesign (e.g., van den Hoven & Eggen, 2008), it seems moreuseful for designers to identify real-life types of remember-ing that could be supported through interactive systems,such as the five R’s (Sellen & Whittaker, 2010): recollect-ing, reminiscing, retrieving, reflecting, and rememberingintentions. These activities can serve as inspiring startingpoints for interaction designs presenting memory cues,which have resulted in design guidelines for these so-calledaugmented memory systems (e.g., Stevens, Abowd,

Truong, & Vollmer, 2003; van den Hoven & Eggen,2008; Kirk & Sellen, 2010; Whittaker et al., 2012).

In the next section, some of the highlights will be pre-sented of how memory cues are used in interaction designin order to support real-life remembering.

Cues in Interaction Design

Within interaction design, studies are often organizedaccording to application area, this also holds for the areaof designing for real-life remembering. Therefore, we willmention a number of these application areas, with examplestudies that all involve the creation, storage, or retrieval ofmemory cues.

One of the more technology-driven application areasconcerns lifelogging: effortless and all-encompassing digi-tal capturing of everything someone experiences (e.g.,Bush, 1945; Gemmell, Bell, Lueder, Drucker, & Wong,2002; Gemmell, Williams, Wood, Lueder, & Bell, 2004;Mann, 2004), for example by wearing recording devicesthat create the cues (e.g., Hodges et al., 2006; Vermuri,Schmandt, Bender, Tellex, & Lassey, 2004). Often theincorrect assumption behind lifelogging is that recordingequals remembering and thus prevents forgetting. Eventhough Sellen et al. (2007) found that using SenseCam (awearable camera that automatically takes photographs)improves remembering compared to a control group, it onlyseems to do so short term. Recently, it has been suggested(Whittaker et al., 2012) to adopt a more user-centered per-spective of lifelogging, focusing more on reminiscing(defined as ‘‘re-living past experiences for emotional orsentimental reasons’’ by Sellen & Whittaker, 2010) andreflecting instead of factual recall.

Most application areas are not technology-driven butuser-centered. A new and upcoming application areafocuses on the needs of people with memory challengesand their carers. For example, Crete-Nishihata et al.(2012) designed life-review applications to support patientswith Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairments,their family members and carers. The applications, and thusmemory cues, included multimedia biographies, narratedslideshows, and a SenseCam-fed photo display.

Another user-centered application area focuses on howpeople want to be remembered in the future. For example,Lindley (2012) studied how older people actively preparemementos to be passed on to family and friends. Also youn-ger generations participate in similar activities when creat-ing time capsules (Petrelli et al., 2009). Both studiesshowed that people actively create new tangible objectsthat could later serve as memory cues, collect and alsocurate already-owned objects. It seems the older partici-pants annotated their materials more than the youngergeneration.

A related application area focuses on remembering thedeceased. For example, novel designs (Banks, Kirk, &Sellen, 2012) are explored that are intended to becomememorials after the owners have passed away. Otherdesigns aim to support communication when in mourning

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over a lost one (van den Hoven et al., 2008). All thesedesign examples serve as memory cues or hold memorycues, such as photographs, a timeline, and twitter feeds.

Recent work has also used memory cues to support per-sonal reflection. For example, Cosley, Schwanda, Schultz,Peesapati, and Lee (2012) have created the online Pensievesystem, which presents social media items as memory cuesto support reminiscence and reflection.

One of the most popular application areas of designingfor real-life remembering is the sharing and recollecting ofpersonal memories. For example, many systems have beenbuilt that facilitate storytelling through the use of photo-graphs, text, sound, videos, and souvenirs (e.g., Golsteijn& van den Hoven, 2013; Jansen, van den Hoven, &Frohlich, 2013; Nunes, Greenberg, & Neustaedter, 2009;O’Hara et al., 2012 and for an overview of earlier examples,see van den Hoven & Eggen, 2008). Also handcraftedbeads representing important life events (Reitsma, Smith,& van den Hoven, 2013) can be used as part of an interac-tive story recording system as memory cues.

What becomes clear from this overview is the diversityof memory cues used, created, and incorporated in design.Photographs, both printed and digital, seem the most popu-lar. Physical objects have shown to be valued more forremembering purposes than digital objects (e.g., Golsteijn,van den Hoven, Frohlich, & Sellen, 2012; Kirk & Sellen,2010; Petrelli et al., 2009; Petrelli & Whittaker, 2010)and therefore it is unsurprising that the majority of thememory cues used turn out to be physical and tangible.

Questions for Designing for Cues

This section describes some of the questions designers facewhen designing for experiences of memory cues. Thesequestions are based on previous work by the authors(e.g., van den Hoven, in press).

What Is the Cue?

When looking at a situation in which someone is cued, it isunclear which elements of the environment play a role inthe cuing process. Is it, for example, the photograph, onlya small part of it, is it the photograph in its frame, or thewhole situation in which the photo frame is perceived?Does anything other than the photograph hinder or stimu-late memory cuing in any way? What is the role of the pre-sentation device? And in research, what is the effect of theresearcher, the laboratory, or the real world, the tasks givenon cuing?

When Does It Become a Cue?

When someone picks up a seashell from the beach, it is notyet a memory cue. However, years later it can act like one.How does this work? Does a cue grow over time, for

example side-by-side with the long-term storage of theassociated memory? Or is the cue already a cue as soonas it is perceived in the context of the remembered event,but does a link have to be made between memory andcue? What is this link and is it flexible too? Can we influ-ence this process?

What Is the Frequency of Cuing?

Berntsen (2009) found that IAMs on average only occurtwice a day, while the number of potential cues seems end-less. This must mean that either cuing happens more often,and, for example, we are not aware of being cued or wesuppress potential cuing, or, on the other hand, it is rareto be cued, for example, because it is difficult to get allthe relevant conditions right.

When Does Something Become a Cue?

Potential memory cues do not cue all the time, because thenwe could not walk past a photo frame without it. Theremust be many variables that make up the conditions inwhich something will or will not cue a memory. Potentialvariables are: the uniqueness (does it stand out from othercues), the strength (the effect a cue has on a person, e.g.,depending on the senses being addressed), the relation tothe environment it is in (should it stand out, or blend in),how the cue has changed over time (e.g., printed photo-graphs fade away and inherited furniture will show usage),the personal perception of the cue (one person might noticeother elements or be more sensitive, but also the person’smood, state or available attentional resources might playa role), the preference of the rememberer (e.g., becausesomeone is drawn to certain objects, might make cuingmore likely).

What Is the Effect of Time and Timing onCuing?

One of these complicated conditions seems to be timing.Memories change over time, so do memory cues (inappearance and effect), and perhaps the links between thetwo (since one object might cue many different memories).The whole situation is dynamic and flexible, so what is theeffect of time on cuing and should we take it into accountwhen designing for it? Should a memory cue be perceivedwith a certain frequency to keep the link between cue andmemory active?

Do Different Types of Cues Have DifferentEffects on Remembering?

In case one would cue someone for a specific memory witha photograph, would this lead to a different response than if

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this person would have been cued for the same memory butwith a word or a person or an environment? Since photo-graphs of activities seem to be better cues to memories(Burt, Mitchell, Raggatt, Jones, & Cowan, 1995) thanphotographs of people, passively created cues, such asSenseCam images, which capture activities in an unorches-trated way might be better cues than actively created cuesthat might zoom in on people and blur the activity at hand(Sellen et al., 2007)?

Can We Identify a Cue Before It Cues?

According to Reder and Ritter (1992) people can make me-tamemory judgments about whether they can answer aquestion before answering it. They see the question as acue and the answer as the memory, and called this cuefamiliarity. Can we then also look at a tangible objectand know whether it has the potential to cue, before it actu-ally does? If so, could a person explicitly select an object tobecome a future memory cue?

Can Cues Be Designed?

When talking about real-life memories and memory cues,are we limited to what people have or can new memorycues be purposefully created and linked to an existingmemory? Can the memory of a cue cue too? And in thatcase, could we imitate or fake a memory cue (not intendedfor confabulation but for real memories)? If memory cuescould be designed, a world of opportunities would openup in supporting remembering.

Does a Cue Need to Have Overlap With theAssociated Memory?

Cues often have an overlap with the memory they cue, forexample a miniature Eiffel tower triggers memories of atrip to Paris including the actual Eiffel tower, but is thisoverlap necessary? Can we design cues that have no over-lap, but still cue? People can influence their own memories,for example, by only thinking of certain activities and notothers, could this flexibility be used to incorporate newlinks to objects that then become memory cues? This wouldopen up opportunities for designing memory cues, sinceactivities could be facilitated that incorporate these newcues.

Can a Cue Be Identified and Thus Designed?

If there are so many memory cue variables, and if cues areso personal, organic, and sensitive to timing, is it then at allpossible to identify a cue in real life and use that informa-tion to design new cues? Might it be possible to predict theeffect of a potential memory cue on the basis of the partic-ular attributes a designer has used in its design?

Could We Make Existing Cues MoreSuccessful in Cuing?

Apart from looking at the memory cuing process, which wemight be able to prime (Mace, 2005), what if we wouldadapt the memory cues themselves, or their presentationto the changing memories, remembering conditions and sit-uation? Could we then increase the chances of a personbeing cued for a particular memory? For example, shouldsome people be removed from photographs, e.g., ex-part-ners, to allow the rememberer to focus on the eventdepicted in the photograph? Or does the selection of appro-priate physical objects increase the chance of rememberingas Jones and Martin (2006) suggest? Does strengthening amemory, e.g., through rehearsal and repetition, or weaken-ing a memory, e.g., through neglect and avoidance, impactthe effect of the memory cue?

Discussion

For people to benefit most from products supporting every-day remembering many questions still need answers.Designing for everyday remembering is a young field thatwe have only started to explore. Many interesting directionslie ahead, for example, emerging trends (for an overview,see van den Hoven, Sas, & Whittaker, 2012) include focus-ing on the facilitation of forgetting, supporting commemo-ration, cherishing the digital more, increasing the longevityof digital media, and understanding the effect of media typeon memory. Even though it is clear that the psychology anddesign perspectives are quite different, as are the methodsand approaches used, through this paper we hope to inspirefuture collaborations to answer some of the questions wehave raised.

Concluding, this paper provided a design perspective onmemory cues and the practical implementation in interac-tion design. An external memory cue from the design per-spective is a physical or digital item that people create,receive, collect, and keep for them to use (implicitly orexplicitly) as a cue for their personal memories. Examplesinclude: souvenirs, gifts, digital photographs, videos, audiorecordings, artworks, furniture, seashells, and diaries. Mostof these external memory cues are part of a tangible presen-tation device or system. The impact of these designs on theactual remembering is not yet understood. Designing forreal-life remembering is a new area of design research, cur-rently exploring different application areas, which showlots of potential for supporting people’s remembering ineveryday life.

Acknowledgments

We thank all our collaborators over the years, but in partic-ular: David Frohlich, Steven Whittaker, Daniela Petrelli,Corina Sas, Abigail Sellen, Connie Golsteijn, Martijn tenBhçmer, Martijn Jansen, Jettie Hoonhout, Ineke Wessel,

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Armin Kohlraush, Matthias Rauterberg, Emile Aarts, DougTedd, Evert van Loenen, Nicolas de Jong, Esko van Dijk,Yuechen Qian, and Dario Teixeira. This research was sup-ported by STW VIDI Grant No. 016.128.303 of The Neth-erlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO),awarded to Elise van den Hoven.

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Elise van den Hoven

School of DesignUniversity of TechnologyPO Box 123Broadway NSW 2007AustraliaTel. +61 2 9514-8967Fax +61 2 9514-8787E-mail elise.vandenhoven@uts.edu.au

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