Meerkat and Tuba: Design Alternatives for Randomness, Surprise and Serendipity in Reminiscing

Abstract

Abstract. People are accumulating large amounts of personal digital content that play a role in reminiscing practices. But as these collections become larger, and older content is less frequently accessed, much of this content is simply forgotten. In response to this we explore the notions of randomness and serendipity in the presentation of content from people's digital collections. To do this we designed and deployed two devices -Meerkat and Tuba -that enable the serendipitous presentation of digital content from people's personal media collections. Each device emphasises different characteristics of serendipity that with a view to understanding whether people interpret and value these in different ways while reminiscing. In order explore the use of the devices in context, we deployed in real homes. We report on findings from the study and discuss their implications for design.

Things That Make Us Reminisce

“…A similar tactic was employed by Cueb to support parentteenager communication through random display of digital photos on tangible objects [12]. Meerkat and Tuba also went for serendipitous presentation of digital media in the home, abdicating user control in favor of surprise [14]. Knowing what to present and when requires keen understanding of what is personally meaningful, questions of interest in this work.…”

“…While (for example) number of interactions may be a telling signifier (e.g., how often a song was played), a system may not know why. Previous work has sidestepped this issue by considering random viewing as a way of achieving serendipity [e.g., 9,14].…”

Conceptualizing the self: A critical analysis of the self as a discursive trend in human-computer interaction research

“…For example, Nie and Sundar (2013) argued that the ways people shape their representations online are less motivated by strategies for making a particular impression on others than by an interest in using these technologies as opportunities to articulate one's identity to oneself through a self-reflexive move (for similar discussions, see also Fox, Bailenson, & Tricase, 2013;Helmes, O'Hara, Vilar, & Taylor, 2011;Marathe & Sundar, 2011;Odom, Zimmerman, & Forlizzi, 2011).…”

Effective browsing and serendipitous discovery with an experience-infused browser

“…Meerkat and Tuba are recent systems designed for promoting serendipity, and the authors make the intriguing observation that "the design for serendipitous experiences has to some extent disappoint as well in order to be effective" [12]. Beale presents techniques to model serendipity and interest based on pages recently viewed by the user; the author uses this prior information to highlight interesting links on the page using special coloring mechanisms [3].…”