Moment

User Research
UI/UX Design
Unity Prototyping
Motion & VFX Design

Unity3d,
ARKit,
Adobe XD,
After Effects

My 6-month independent thesis project explores how extended reality technology could enable contextualized presence and support reminiscing behaviour. Utilizing geolocation-based AR technology, I created this adventure-like experience that lets people revisit their past memories at the locations where those experiences happened.

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Research Ideation Design & Prototyping
Final Project Future Potential Bibliography

Full Documentation 👉

RESEARCH

User Interviews

Literature Review

Existing Product Analysis

Why memory matters

Memory as self-making narratives

Reminiscing is a universal behaviour that consists of memory revisiting and self-narrative generation. It is an important human behaviour that helps people develop a strong self-concept, enhance the social bond and improve their future thinking skills.

In autobiographical memory theory, memory plays the role of constructing self-concept, maintain social relationships and predict future. By recalling life events, people are developing a strong self-concept that allows people understand and remember who they think they are, and connect those experienced with the current situation, which ultimately helps them clarify their self-identity for changes and mental stabilities.

Contextualized Presence

Location-based Experience

Memory is contextually affected and can be triggered by contextual information, such as geolocation, smell, sound and physical state.

Creating a psychogeographical map allows people to understand how their emotion is affected around the city as a new way of appreciating their life and the city. It can also be seen as a tool to help people learn about themselves, and even uncover their true desires in everyday life. Being able to see memories happened at places where it happened can personalized the association between place and the person, and create a strong sense of contextualized presence.

New Memory Materials

Technology-mediated Memories

We constantly share content on social media and contribute to our own digital footprint which becomes new memory materials and supports our reminiscing behaviour. Our life is recorded and mediated by technology, and a huge amount of metadata is generated alongside. When we take photos, our phone automatically records the location tag, date, and recognize the people, which makes contextual understanding possible.

If human memory is the raw material stored in our head, technology mediated memory is more accessible, selective, and can be displayed in a rich media format. Technology provides a huge amount of records and opportunities for self-reflection, and enable content curation on past experience.

Rosy Retrospection

Bias in reminiscing

We unconsciously develop biases in reminiscence and tend to look back at past experiences from an adaptive perspective. According to adaptive memory theory, people are more likely to have a positive mindset to understand what they did in the past to get over the negative experiences happened in the past. We choose to distant from past events and look back at it from a third-person perspective to make sense of it, and even embrace mistakes we have made.

Rosy retrospection and fading affect bias are also at play in reminiscing. all of these unconscious biases reduce the pain in reminiscing, and do not pose threat on mental health, but can help to maintain well-being in the long run.

Memory Product & MR Tech Research

IDEATION

People constantly post information on social media, and later on, this content becomes memory material and supports our reminiscing behaviour. Our life is also recorded and mediated by technology, and a huge amount of metadata is generated along with this organic content.

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DESIGN & PROTOTYPING PROCESS

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Art Direction

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AR prototype created in Unity using AR foundation, Location + AR package, VFX Graphic

FINAL PROJECT

**Move Device to start exploring the space**

AR Onboarding Experience

People tend to distance themselves from past events and look back at them from a third-person perspective so that they can make sense of them, and embrace mistakes they have made.

Find the AR Portal

The floating memory bubble flies out of the screen and an arrow appears to ask users to move this way. This design helps users to find the object in AR and encourages them to explore the environment.

Revisit the Moment

The idea of interacting with the memory bubble transforms people’s perspective to an adventure-like experience: although people are revisiting their memory, the interaction mechanism makes it like a new adventure, a new moment.

**Guide users to find the memory bubble**

**Tap the memory bubble to revisit the moment**

Write to your future self

Writing a short note about your feeling when revisit the memory, which encourages people to articulate the abstract thought and generate positive self-concept.

Envelop opening animation is a metaphor unfolding a story happened in the past. It also smooths the transition to a screen-based coordinate and lead user to the message reading scene.

Other Screens

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FUTURE POTENTIAL

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Volumetric video capturing is still at a very early stage. Digital media studio like 8i is experimenting with storytelling in volumetric videos. Research conducted in this field is also exploring solutions in 3d human digitization.

Credit: PIFuHD: Multi-Level Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization

Revivify our feelings in a multi-model experience

My thesis project shows the potential of applying XR in experience rebuilding, and the notion of time travel. When multi-sensory capture becomes accessible, creating a hybrid experience where people could re-enter their past memory with a MR headset will not be a dream anymore. the experience could be expanded to a multimodal experience, including visual, audio, olfactory and haptic. These mixed media format would add a new dimension to reminiscence and memory revisiting. Although this whole project might look a bit conceptual and experimental at this stage, I believe that something similar can be invented in the near future.

Full documentation here

Bibliography

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To find more about my design skills, please see projects: