The Context
I’ve always been a relentless documenter. When I was growing up I would amass ticket stubs, souvenir pins, and photographs, compiling them all into scrapbooks, trying to hold on to those moments of of the past.
In the age of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, we’ve all become documenters. Almost everyone on earth has a camera at every moment, and it’s estimated that the world collectively has taken over 3.5 trillion photos, with the numbers growing every day.
But in all this documentation, what’s the heart of what we’re trying to capture? As I headed into my MFA thesis for SVA’s Interaction Design program, I found myself fascinated with the amount of digital artifacts we were creating for ourselves in this modern age. (In a world before Facebook’s “On this day” feature and Spotify time capsule playlists) I spent the year exploring how we make meaning out of the digital lives we leave behind.
To read more, visit my process blog.
Role
Owned all parts of project from concept, research, prototyping through final design and presentation.
Why Music?
Our brains do not record our experiences the way that a camera records them. We extract fragments from our experiences and store them in different parts of the brain, and when we remember them, we grab all those pieces and reconstruct them, to form a memory.
When songs are remembered, they’re encoded with a whole variety of contextual details, and like we’ve seen, being re-exposed to the song can bring those rich details flooding back. Using songs as memory triggers gives us access to a whole range of senses and experiences we didn’t remember that we remembered at the time. In short, music prompts stories.
Throughout all my explorations into drawing out memories, music far and away was the most effective in drawing out incredibly detailed stories from people, encoded in fascinating sensory detail.
Early Explorations
Before hitting on music, I spent time exploring other ways people interact with memory. Early explorations centered on the idea that memories change each time we remember them (making it, perhaps, more ideal to have your most precious ones locked away.
Detailed Explorations
It became clear that the best form of this idea would be conceptualized as an app, that allowed the user several exploratory models in order to create, or respond to, musical memory story triggers. Allowing the user to explore was important, as browsing through songs from different locations and times, as well as allowing users to enter contextual information when a song unexpectedly sparked a story, and balancing both became key pieces of the interface.
The Solution
I created Noteworthy as a service that helps you capture and share memories by linking them to music.
For those looking to create meaningful records of their life, Noteworthy is a platform that uses music as the means to document their personal stories as well as begin sincere conversations with friends and family.
Remember it in song
By creating a personal archive of song memories, users can reflect on their lives and begin meaningful conversations with family and friends.
Prompts & Contextualization
The service was conceived to connect to music services like iTunes & Spotify, as well as popular social media services like Facebook & Instagram, to contextualize songs for users and encourage them to input memories.
Music that Matters
Once the user builds up an archive of meaningful moments, they can generate hyper-personalized playlists for themselves, family and friends based on the people, times, and places they care about.
Logo & brand development based on the musical notation Dal Segno – which instructs a musician to “go back to and play” from the symbol
Final Presentation
Learn more by watching my thesis presentation below or visit my process site at makeitnoteworthy.com.