Digital artifacts for remembering and storytelling: posthistory and social network fragments

• Published in: 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2004. Proceedings of the p. 10 pp.
• Main Authors: Viegas, F.B., Boyd, D., Nguyen, D.H., Potter, J., Donath, J.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2004
• Subjects: Electronic mail; Technology social factors; Visualization
• ISBN: 0769520561; 9780769520568
• DOI: 10.1109/HICSS.2004.1265287

As part of a long-term investigation into visualizing email, we have created two visualizations of email archives. One highlights social networks while the other depicts the temporal rhythms of interactions with individuals. While interviewing users of these systems, it became clear that the applications triggered recall of many personal events. One of the most striking and not entirely expected outcomes was that the visualizations motivated retelling stories from the users' pasts to others. In this paper, we discuss the motivation and design of these projects and analyze their use as catalysts for personal narrative and recall.