Multiple multimodal mobile devices: Lessons learned from engineering lifelog solutions

For lifelogging, or the recording of one’s life history through digital means, to be successful, a range of separate multimodal mobile devices must be employed. These include smartphones such as the N95, the Microsoft SenseCam – a wearable passive photo capture device, or wearable biometric devices. Each collects a facet of the bigger picture, through, for example, personal digital photos, mobile messages and documents access history, but unfortunately, they operate independently and unaware of each other. This creates significant challenges for the practical application of these devices, the use and integration of their data and their operation by a user. In this chapter we discuss the software engineering challenges and their implications for individuals working on integration of data from multiple ubiquitous mobile devices drawing on our experiences working with such technology over the past several years for the development of integrated personal lifelogs. The chapter serves as an engineering guide to those considering working in the domain of lifelogging and more generally to those working with multiple multimodal devices and integration of their data

Enabling storytelling by aphasics in an augmented home environment

We present the design of a system for Aphasics that assist them in storytelling. Storytelling, in the sense of being able to relate recent and past experiences to relevant others, is considered to be crucial for the quality of life and psychological wellbeing of most people. The storytelling support system that we propose is primarily intended to be used by Aphasics in their postrehabilitation period. Our focus is on the creation of daily stories with the help of passively captured materials, hence emphasizing the need for fairly effortless interaction from the side of the end user. End-user requirements gathering was especially difficult in this project, because of the verbal limitations in our user group. Many requirements for the system were hence decided through consulting proxies of the Aphasics, such as their caregivers. The preliminary feedbacks on our design provide interesting insights for the design of a more complete storytelling system for Aphasics. We also discuss some interesting challenges from a technological and methodological point of view that arose in the course of the design

Enabling storytelling by Aphasics in an augmented home environment

We present the design of a system for Aphasics that assist them in storytelling. Storytelling, in the sense of being able to relate recent and past experiences to relevant others, is considered to be crucial for the quality of life and psychological wellbeing of most people. The storytelling support system that we propose is primarily intended to be used by Aphasics in their postrehabilitation period. Our focus is on the creation of daily stories with the help of passively captured materials, hence emphasizing the need for fairly effortless interaction from the side of the end user. End-user requirements gathering was especially difficult in this project, because of the verbal limitations in our user group. Many requirements for the system were hence decided through consulting proxies of the Aphasics, such as their caregivers. The preliminary feedbacks on our design provide interesting insights for the design of a more complete storytelling system for Aphasics. We also discuss some interesting challenges from a technological and methodological point of view that arose in the course of the design

Digital life stories: Semi-automatic (auto)biographies within lifelog collections

Our life stories enable us to reflect upon and share our personal histories. Through emerging digital technologies the possibility of collecting life experiences digitally is increasingly feasible; consequently so is the potential to create a digital counterpart to our personal narratives. In this work, lifelogging tools are used to collect digital artifacts continuously and passively throughout our day. These include images, documents, emails and webpages accessed; texts messages and mobile activity. This range of data when brought together is known as a lifelog. Given the complexity, volume and multimodal nature of such collections, it is clear that there are significant challenges to be addressed in order to achieve coherent and meaningful digital narratives of our events from our life histories. This work investigates the construction of personal digital narratives from lifelog collections. It examines the underlying questions, issues and challenges relating to construction of personal digital narratives from lifelogs. Fundamentally, it addresses how to organize and transform data sampled from an individual’s day-to-day activities into a coherent narrative account. This enquiry is enabled by three 20-month long-term lifelogs collected by participants and produces a narrative system which enables the semi-automatic construction of digital stories from lifelog content. Inspired by probative studies conducted into current practices of curation, from which a set of fundamental requirements are established, this solution employs a 2-dimensional spatial framework for storytelling. It delivers integrated support for the structuring of lifelog content and its distillation into storyform through information retrieval approaches. We describe and contribute flexible algorithmic approaches to achieve both. Finally, this research inquiry yields qualitative and quantitative insights into such digital narratives and their generation, composition and construction. The opportunities for such personal narrative accounts to enable recollection, reminiscence and reflection with the collection owners are established and its benefit in sharing past personal experience experiences is outlined. Finally, in a novel investigation with motivated third parties we demonstrate the opportunities such narrative accounts may have beyond the scope of the collection owner in: personal, societal and cultural explorations, artistic endeavours and as a generational heirloom