The 'Path Diary' - concept and prototype

Major Studio : Final Project
Ji Sun, Lee (Sun) December 2, 2004

Path Diary – The Gate to Memory

Overview
Have you ever had an experience where suddenly you can’t remember anything and the memory dawns upon you later? Watching and remembering something, new memory comes into existence in a fixed place to be saved in the brain and the memory comes out from that place when people recall it. In Howstuffworks.com, they talk about amnesia, which is a result of mingling patheways - ‘memory traces’.

“Physiologically speaking, a memory is the result of chemical or even structural changes in synaptic transmissions between neurons. As these changes occur, a pathway is created. This pathway is called a memory trace. Signals can travel along these memory traces through the brain.” (Howstuffworks)

For that reason, when getting old people sometimes fail to recall memory because memory paths mingle in order to store a previous memory while accommodating new memories. So, that means the memory is not lost, but just was failed to find a pathway to recall the previous memory. This phenomenon shows why memory comes out suddenly later. (see Fig. 1.)


[Fig. 1. – Memory loss after thirty years old of age]

Then, if people could store their entire life, they would not lose any memory and could recall memories whenever they want. In addition, if they could share the memory with their family and friends, they could convey directly what they think or feel.
Every event of people’s life happens in some physical places in the world and people remember the event or feeling about the atmosphere. Each event connects with other events as the memory in the brain works like physical places are connected with other places in the real world. If people store an entire real life’s path in the physical location, that means they could save all memory paths in a brain. So, we could build the hypothesis that the location of an occurrence in the physical world is the same as the memory location in our brains. For that reason, developing a memory device to store and to search for an event or experience with the location information of the real world would show us the possibility to save and recall the entire memory of our lives. (see Fig. 2.)

[Fig. 2. – The location of an event occurrence = The memory location]

Target User
The primary user will be the person who gets lots of stress remembering everyday life and who is over thirty. In addition, this tool is very helpful to people who suffer from Altzheimer’s disease to recall their memory and people who get cancer and will die soon to share their life with their lover. Or, the parents of an autistic child could figure out what problem they have or how they think.

Interviews and research about memory
Five participants answered an interview to figure out how to remember personal memory and what memories people want to remember. Most of the participants wanted to remember specific information which is related to their work. But the answer about the memory that they want to remember the most is their happiest or a beautiful moment in their life. Moreover, the information that they want to remember is saved by text in a note or a post-it, but on the other hand, the events are saved as pictures, which stimulates our visual sense.

Type	Content	Device	Related location
Events	Dinner with a boyfriend, baby birth	pictures, movie files, a diary…	Everywhere in our physical world
Information and to-do list	Name, telephone number, appointment, schedule…	post-it, an appointment book…
Objects	A key, a TV remote control…	Just remember	Usually our house or office

[Table 1. Interview result: Categorization of memory]

In addition, the memory device evolves according to technology development. In the past, many people used a diary with text, but now new generation uses the on-line diary with cell phone pictures. In the near future, people may save their everyday life using movie camera phones.

Time	Before 1950’s	1950’s ~ 1990’s	2000’s ~ present	Future
Capture	Think and imagine	More pictures	Cell phone camera, digital camera…	Movie camera phone, PDA with camera
Display	Text in a note/dairy	Pictures in photo album or frame	Pictures in blog or computer	Everywhere

[Table 2. Research result: Memory device evolution]

In the future, the most common file format of the information might be a movie file with sound. So, people might not need to use a hand to write. In addition, people could store unlimited huge files, because the price of terabyte hard drives will dip below $300 in the near future. Moreover, people could not only save multimedia data, but also include the location of information which is related to an event and additional information such as a telephone call, a television program.

The Concept of the ‘Path Diary’
The ‘Path Diary’ is a tool to record and recall a path of everyday life with visual and auditory memories as a diary of people’s memory. Although people use five senses to save their memory, people utilize visual and auditory senses more than others. This kind of phenomenon supports the interview results that people usually describe most memories with a visual sense. (Ji Sun Lee, Interview result report).
Also, people could not remember exactly the event that they had been experienced in the past, and they make up a new and transformed story about their past experience. Even if they remember a false memory, they believe the memory is true. In the movie ‘The Wizard of OZ’, the real world is the black and white color movie and the imaginary world is color movie (see Fig. 3.) In the ‘Path Diary’, our whole experience would be stored in black and white, and the memory that we want to remember would be stored in color, like we remember imaginary memory and believe that it is a true event that they experienced.
So, the memory in this diary is not the same as our memory, but this memory in the ‘Path Diary’ would be a gate or clue showing a real event with the real physical place to enter our imaginary memory.

[Fig. 3. – The wizard of OZ: real world vs. imaginary world]

The ‘Path Diary’ consists of ‘The Third Eye’, ‘Memory Diary’, ‘RFID(Radio Frequency Identification)-it’, which are related to the physical location. ‘The Third Eye’ could capture an event and the ‘RFID-it’ could be used to find an object around people. The ‘Memory Diary’ is to display the location information of the event and the object on a screen.

Path Diary
The Third Eye	Memory Diary	RFID-it
To remember an event
	To remember an object

[Table 3. Structure of the Path Diary]

The Third Eye
‘The Third Eye’ records visual and auditory memories as what you see and hear. The memory is recorded by a recording device, which consists of a camera, a microphone, and a GPS(Global positioning system). There are two kinds of designs for this device. The first one is attaching the camera between eyes and connects with left and right memory buttons which control the recording function (see Fig. 4.).

[Fig. 4. The first design of The Third Eye]
The reason of attaching the camera between the eyes is to record the same angle of the view that people turn their head all the time to see. However, people tend to hesitate to attach something on their face and it can’t not exactly detect movement of the pupil of the eye (Ji Sun Lee, Prototype test result report). So, the second design was designed to overcome these disadvantages. This design is hanging the device on the ear and its lens can detect the eyeball of user. The camera is located on side of the record button (see Fig. 5.).

[Fig. 5. The second design of The Third Eye]
The recorded data of the event and location by GPS always saves at ‘Memory Diary’ in real time and if the user presses the record button, the system of the device creates new event data with time and location information and sends the data to the Memory Diary to save and display.

Memory Diary
The ‘Memory Diary’ is to display everyday paths using GPS with the memory spots which are created by The Third Eye. This is similar to a typical diary. People could see and search for their daily life events using date and location information and evoke past memory when they watch and listen to the movie made by clicking the record button. In addition, if users want to remember the memory more specifically, they can add text to an event.

[Fig. 6. Interface of the Memory Diary]
Basically, the ‘Memory Diary’ would be displayed in the ‘Path Diary’ which has the same as shape of as a diary. Furthermore, the same data on the screen would be displayed in the palm of the hand, a cell phone, a mirror at home, or a picture frame.

RFID – it
The RFID(radio frequency identification) has the ability to hold more data, the ability to change the stored data as processing occurs, does not require line-of-sight to transfer data and is very effective in harsh environments (Wikipedia, "RFID"). Nowadays, low -frequency RFID tags are commonly used for tracking animals, like pets, identifying and finding them. Moreover, the RFID tag size is very small and could be embedded anywhere and anything. Like people want to remember something they use the ‘Post-it’ to attach some where, the ‘RFID-it’ tag, which is similar to the ‘Post-it’, could be attached what user remembers and wants to find.
This device is to find an object that people forget very often and to attach the RFID tag to an object. The ‘RFID-it’ would include a function detecting a location using the GPS (minimum 1m) and small space detector like NorthStar (minimum 3cm ~5cm). If a user has the object that he or she want to remember such as a house key , or a television remote controller, he or she presses a button to create a RFID tag which includes location information and data. Then, at the same time, ‘The Third Eye’ records the object. When the user wants to find the object, he or she is looking at the ‘Memory Diary’ and presses the find button of the object. The user would be able to see where the object is and to hear the sound that the tag on the object makes. Following the sound and knowing the location in the specific area on the screen lets people find the object very easily.

[Fig. 7. How to use RFID-it]

Reference
Mylifebits
http://research.microsoft.com/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx
Innovations: A Watchful Wristwatch
http://www.engr.washington.edu/enews/2004-10/11-print.html
NorthStar : Intelligent localization for indoor products
http://www.evolution.com
GPS Drawing
http://www.gpsdrawing.com
GPS photo Linking
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/2004/06/15/gps_photo.html
Habitat Perspectives
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/perspectives/index.cfm
Elephant paths
http://www.elephantpaths.net/

Bibliography
Howstuffworks. "What exactly is amnesia?" 10 November 2004. http://science.howstuffworks.com/question672.htm
Ji Sun Lee. "Interview result report of the 'Path Diary'". 25 November 2004. http://a.parsons.edu/~jslee/interface2004/frame.html
Ji Sun Lee. "Prototype test result report of the 'Path Diary'". 9 December 2004. http://a.parsons.edu/~jslee/interface2004/frame.html
Wikipedia. "RFID". 2 December 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID