This dissertation describes a research agenda for designing technologies to support and enhance intergenerational family memory. I employ an interpretivist, mixed methods approach combining ethnographic inquiry and research-through-design to understand the practices and values enacted in this context. These insights are linked to design through the concept of a narrative inheritance. Narrative inheritance frames family memory as a collective accomplishment among family members, both a negotiated process and a mediated product continually reconstructed across generations. To consider the implications of this negotiation and mediation for design, I include an analysis of three “wicked problems” facing those who seek to pass on family memories across generations: anticipating future audiences, curating large-scale collections, and negotiating dissonant values across many family members. The problems highlight the sociotechnical nature of family memory and values at work that influence design decisions and outcomes.
This work includes three studies employing ethnographic methods to investigate cross-generational memory sharing practices, focusing especially on the crafting of family stories and the challenges of managing the mementos and heirlooms which mediate family memory. The concluding two studies employ design prototypes as generative artifacts to elucidate and work out the socio-technical values and tensions which become embedded in design for intergenerational family memory. The insights gained from the ethnographic and design work in this thesis will help designers better understand the accomplishment of family memory in light of complex “wicked” problems, leading to more nuanced and engaging designs for real-world use.
The work presented in this dissertation makes the following contributions:
1) Identifies the practices enacted by families sharing memories with future generations, especially navigating mediation dilemmas,
2) Develops an understanding of how recipients of shared family memories respond to and interpret incompleteness (of narratives) and overabundance (of artifacts),
3) Explores the design space of collective, multi-lifespan systems for passing on a family’s “narrative inheritance”
4) Develops a design framework for technologies for a “narrative inheritance” that helps designers identify and navigates the multiple consonant and dissonant values of intergenerational family memory.PHDInformationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140877/1/jazzij_1.pd
