Project Rationale
Family archives are often passed down from one generation to the next through a collection of photos or artefacts and focused on preserving memories and narratives that are deemed traditionally significant and noteworthy. But that means that many seemingly insignificant moments that might have played important roles in shaping a person’s character, identity and values remain undocumented or forgotten by families, especially when they are not talked about or passed down.
In this project, ‘Do you know your family?’, I am exploring the way in which the process of intergenerational family storytelling can be used to help build identity, values and connections within a family by developing a family storytelling app to prompt and document the sharing of stories through the process of question collection, prototyping and user testing of UX design. So that the app might be used by families to reconcile the “missing” bits of family history and discover similarities between different generations of family members.
Through the use of this app, the traditionally formal process of gathering family history will be made more approachable and gamified such that all members of the family are able to actively participate in the documentation of family stories. The framework provided through the use of the ‘Do you know your family’ family storytelling app focuses on the aspect of sowing your seeds in the present and reaping the fruits of your labour in the future - rather than leaving family archiving to a later time in your life, it would be best to start now and learn about your family while everyone is still around.
Take a look at the making of my project here!
The Experience
Learn about app functions and sign in with Google to store family memories forever.
Set up a group and invite family members before setting up profiles
Choose a question prompt from the growing question collection and also submit your own.
Randomised questions with a 2 min timer for you to type in your answers and share with the whole family when the time is up!
View past stories by date, topics and keywords and find similarities between family members.
Credits
‘Do you know your family?’ was produced in the Visual Communication Honours degree at the University of Technology Sydney under the supervision of Sara Oscar. Special thanks to Zoë Sadokierski, Rachel Lee, David Suyasa, Demi Tcha, question activity respondents and user testing participants (An Tyng Ng, Wah Soon Leong, Rhiannon Greenaway, Kathryn Willis, Matthew Willis and Sirikit).
