PicMemory: Mind Finalist in This Year’s Design Challenge

PicMemory (Mind)

Team Lead: Hung-Chi Lee
University: National Taiwan University

A mobile app designed to help people with dementia organize their life stories while facilitating family interaction, PicMemory was inspired by Sha Yao’s Eatwell, winner of 2014’s Design Challenge. “I was a Ph.D. student at that time,” explains team lead Hung-Chi Lee, “my research topic also related to people with dementia, so the news about Sha Yao and the competition encouraged me to think about how can I enter the Challenge with my PicMemory project.”

PicMemory was also inspired by Hung-Chi’s grandmother: “She raised me when I was a kid, so she taught me lots of things about life and family, and loves to share many funny things from daily life, or stories of our family from the past. But I found nothing was recorded whenever my grandmother shared her stories. So that is why I designed PicMemory to pick up our family memories. I’d like to help seniors easily share and collect life stories, and enrich feelings of happiness with their family.”

Designing and Prototyping Pic Memory
“The original idea began in 2014, and has been developed over two years. We revised our design four times, including the user interfaces, functions, and operation methods. Up to now, we have created five different prototypes of Pic Memory.”

Key Takeaway from Designing PicMemory
“I found that seniors love sharing their wisdom and stories from the past with their family, but that there are few opportunities for them to do so in daily life. For this reason, we would like to provide a platform where they can do so, while also collecting family memories for future generations.”

Future Plans for PicMemory
“If we win the Challenge, we would like to release our service to daycare centers and caring organizations. As a next step, we would like to extend our service to all users, so everyone can use PicMemory to collect and share their life stories with their families.”