Designing for the Other 'Hereafter': When Older Adults Remember about
Forgetting
Older Adult Support
/
Ramos, Laura
/
van den Hoven, Elise
/
Miller, Laurie
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.721-732
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: Designing to support memory for older individuals is a complex challenge in
human-computer interaction (HCI) research. Past literature on human memory has
mapped processes for recalling past experiences, learning new things,
remembering to carry out future intentions and the importance of attention.
However, the understanding of how older adults perceive forgetting in daily
life remains limited. This paper narrows this gap through a study with older
persons (n=18) living independently using self-reporting and semi-structured
focus groups to explore what they forget, how they react, and what mechanisms
they put in place to recover from and avoid forgetting. Findings include
occurrences of prospective and retrospective memory lapses, conflicting
negative and neutral perceptions, and techniques to manage forgetting.
Participant responses indicate that an awareness of forgetting fosters internal
tensions among older adults, thereby creating opportunities for further design
research, e.g., to defuse and normalise these reactions.
