Memory
Strengths of Memory
What makes us remember? Emotion!
"Emotion can have a powerful impact on memory. Numerous studies 2 have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events.
The activity of emotionally enhanced memory retention can be linked to human evolution; during early development, responsive behavior to environmental events would have progressed as a process of trial and error. Survival depended on behavioral patterns that were repeated or reinforced through life and death situations. Through evolution, this process of learning became genetically embedded in humans and all animal species in what is known as flight or fight instinct.”
In addition to its effects during the encoding phase, emotional arousal appears to increase the likelihood of memory consolidation during the retention (storage) stage of memory (the process of creating a permanent record of the encoded information). A number of studies show that over time, memories for neutral stimuli decrease but memories for arousing stimuli remain the same or improve.
Weaknesses of Memory
Does Google Make Us Stupid?
http://www.wired.com/2011/07/is-google-ruin-
ing-your-memory/
“Although we like to think of our cortical hard drive as infinite in capacity, it’s actually pretty constrained, which is why we’re always looking for ways to not remember stuff. If we know that a fact is only a Google away, then we’re not going to waste precious synaptic space on it. Better to let a server remember.
Processes of human memory are adapting to the advent of new computing and communication technology. Just as we learn through transactive memory who knows what in our families and offices, we are learning what the computer “knows” and when we should attend to where we have stored information in our computer-based memories.”
EMOTIONS
Giving users an emotional experi- ence to easily recall the interac- tion with the system or website will let them remember.
This can be done through warm and fuzzies by story telling and imagery, or the other way where the design can evoke another set of emotions to help with memory retention.
EXPERIENCE
Similar to emotion, what kind of experience can be created that the user will be easily remember?
I remember playing the Oregon trail game on facebook when it first started, that was very similar to the original Oregon Trail I played as a kid. This experience made me want to come back, and easily recall why I enjoyed using facebook, despite the fact Facebook was fairly new still.
SIRI AND VOICE COMMANDS
Siri works like google, but even more we can tell her to remind us of upcoming events when we don’t want to clutter our mind with remember ourselves.
Voice commands can be very helpful in memory and interaction because first it can tell the user what to do, and second the user can ask it questions. Careful though, voice commands do not read emotions, which is the strongest way to implant memories to the users.
SETTING REMINDERS
Since our brain’s complexity is absolutely worked in every capacity, we can’t possibly remember some of the boring day to day things. This might be to remember to get toilet paper at the grocery store. Systems and websites are able to today, with web technology, remind users of needed purchases, where they are currently on the sight, what other portions of the sight are, and even give precise details in the reminder to the user can not forget why it was there in the first place, which actually is pretty common with the ol’ tie a string around the finger trick.
GOOGLE BABY!
We let Google think for us. When we know that the knowledge is there, just at our fingertips, we are quick to open our smartphones and tablets to simply ask.
While this is incredibly helpful, it seems to helpful in some situations where we depend on this too much.
All images in this article have been created using A.I.