>> Next up we have our home team, University of Washington, with Loom,
storytelling experience for your tight-knit community.
>> So we are from the University of Washington Division of Design. I'm
Jennifer. This is Charlotte. Catherine, Jaewon and Kendall, and we're excited
to share our project with you. Loom is a tool for friends and family to
collectively weave stories. A bit about how we got here we were really
interested in the social experiences of older adults, an area that is far less
just explored or designed for them, for example, the medical aspects of aging.
To better understand this space, we reached out to the Wallingford Community
Senior Center and we were able to spend time there. We served lunch and visited
a few times, were able to spend time with people at the center to better
understand the social context of older adults. We did this through observation
and simply sitting down and having conversations with them. One thing we
noticed was the popularity of tabletop games like dominos or bridge. And the
director of the center she had a really valuable insight with us, that
activities that people think of as more sedentary or passive serve a very
important purpose to keep people connected and for cognitive stimulation. One
particularly moving example of this at the senior center is the knitting circle
that has been around for 40 years. Getting people to just sit down and engage
in conversation. And we ran with this metaphor of the knitting circle as we
designed a physical prompt for storytelling. So Loom is a tool to just get
people sitting and talking and to weave conversations and memories.
>> So when people talk about a family photo, they usually start with one story
and then branch off into many different stories related to that one story. Loom
actually captures the connections between these memories in addition to the
memories themselves. And once we had this idea we wanted to try and explore and
expand it with Yoko and Ichie, a great couple we met at the senior center. So
we quickly developed our prototype, and then asked them to share their family
stories with us and our video is a documentation of the experience they had.
[Music]
>> Next month it will be 58 years.
[Music]
He's 92 and I'm 85.
>> He likes to look at old pictures. Nice memories will come back and so he
enjoys that. Every time he gets a chance, he loves to tell the stories. The
stories helps.
>> My father went up to Mt. Rainier and he made it up.
picture looks like the tallest one.
When you look at the
>> And I think it's good for our family, our children and grandchildren, to
know what kind of life he had and what kind of hardship he overcame and he never
gave up.
>> My father went up to Mt. Rainier and he made it up.
[Music]
>> He had lots of friends. Although most people passed away. Looking at the
old pictures and he likes to think about people he met all through his life.
[Music]
>> That must be the flag that my father put up there.
[Music]
>>
So I think the story comes alive.
>> It was nice talking to you.
-- [laughter] -- bye.
It's true to them.
I'm glad I know all about you now.
I know that
>> So by spending time with Ichie we saw how excited he was to use Loom to
share his stories and recount his family history but we learned also how to
further develop our concept. In the video we used prototypes made out of old
iPhones and realized that the size was actually a little be small. Which leads
us to imagine that the Loom system could actually be applied across a whole
variety of across larger devices. This means that even old devices could be
upcycled by simply adding a wooden frame to give it more warmth and a friendlier
feeling. And we also realized that we take the complexity of touch interaction
for granted. So for Itchie to distinguish between tap and tap and hold wasn't
really possible. We decided to minimize the touch interface and focus more on
voice direction to create a more accessible multiple input experience. The way
the system works, when Itchie tells stories, Loom records them and attaches them
to a specific photo. And this content lives in the cloud and photos can come
from existing photo sharing services such as Facebook or Instagram that Loom
could build on top of or people could choose to upload individual photos.
Because this content is in the cloud Itchie can not only access the photos when
he's at home but when he's in the senior center, when he's visiting family and
friends, and having multiple devices allows for the same type of collaborative
activity that prompts storytelling, that the knitting circle does that we
discovered in the senior center. And because you can use any number of devices,
the system is really flexible in allowing you to tell a great variety of
stories.
>> So as you saw in our video we toyed with this idea of arrangements. But
what we discovered was that the placement of the devices isn't really what
matters. What's more important is that Loom captures the individual threads
that connect these stories together. For example, in this photo, when Yoko and
Itchie were telling the story together, the story is linked to the gestures that
they make on the photograph, visualizing the experience of that conversation,
like who told which part of the story and what area of the photograph they
pointed to. This narrative context adds a deeper layer of meaning to the
photos, and these can be played back and shared with family and friends so that
they can get details that are not immediately apparent in that photograph.
Shared across generations, these memories come alive. And we think that the
potential of Loom offers the ability to apply to other contexts such as schools,
the workplace or museums. Really any other number of social contexts where a
physical object can prompt conversation. One of the most touching experiences
that we had throughout this process is that moment captured in the video where
Mary says: You talk, I know that you talk now. And it's because she had never
really heard him speak. This is because Itchie has some loss of hearing and
that sometimes prevents him from being able to engage in conversation. But we
really saw him sort of come alive and open up and tell these amazing stories,
with those family photos in front of him, to the point where we basically
couldn't get him to stop talking. And this really speaks to the potential
transformative value of Loom. Like an actual loom, this is a tool you weave
with. And the outcome of this is continuously growing fabric composed of the
narrative threads from the most important people in your life. Thank you.
[Applause]
>>
Thank you, University of Washington.
Who would like to go first.
>> So where are you guys now in the product development phase? Is this
something that's out and people can download it as an app or where is it.
>>
[indiscernible]
>>
Still at the conceptual level.
>>
To explore this idea.
All right.
Cool.
>> That's really great. I really find this to be very meaningful. And I
really like it. I always debate, you know, there's -- what you're introducing
is essentially a microphone with a photo. So the technology is actually very,
very simple. But what you're providing is the context for this to occur, and
that's an area that can work or sometimes doesn't work. It really depends on
the thing. Here I think it really can work. I think there's a lot of potential
to the idea, because while a network like I don't know Facebook can have the
functionality to record sound over a photo, that would be a feature for
Facebook, the contextual nature of having an app that gives you kind of that
closeness to your family is actually the only place where you really kind of
want that depth for most photos, I think, or where you would really consume that
experience. So that's really exciting. I really like the brand. I think you
guys have really nailed the word, it's just so good for it. I just really like
it. And I think the simplicity of really, really helps especially with the
demographic that you're working with there. So I encourage you to look at -- I
haven't done this research, but any networks that pertain to family that already
exist could be threatening to you or you might want to become that network by
directly as a thought. But I think the brand would work for both. So it's very
promising and happy to talk to you guys and those that worked on it that helped.
>> Yeah, very nicely presented and put together project. Very, very engaging
video. I did have to -- it was embarrassing if I cry. That was lovely. You
did -- the video was really well done. And a little bit slushy but that's okay.
The fact that you thought about the inclusiveness of your video and included
subtitles, kind of a good touch. I kept thinking about almost like the literal
out of box here, and thinking you kind of fudged this a little bit about well
the photos can come from anywhere but I think really thinking about how you move
from the online repository of photos to how many of these things do you actually
have and how does that picture get on it and what that's like, I feel like that
would be incredibly central to that experience of setting it up. I think that
would feel really important. And I think it's worth spending time on that, much
like you had about like I can't do all that swiping and stuff, had a very simple
interaction how do you make that whole setup experience would be vital. But
really nice project.
>> Yeah, I commend you guys on the video storytelling and there's this little
detail which probably everybody noticed but on viewing it a second time I
noticed again which is the fact that the wife of the participant, central
participant, is actually narrating the story, which you sort of forget the
storytelling elegance of that as it's not you guys telling the story, it's
actually somebody who's been affected by the concept and seen the transformative
effect it had on their partner. So that video is really quite masterful.
Congratulations on that. I feel like the concept, I feel very similar, like
there's a lot of just, because it's a simple idea, tying the storytelling to the
picture and having that recording and the sharing and the sort of longevity of
that idea, those ideas and stories for a family, it's such a simple thing, but
there's so many kind of horrible barriers for getting even those photographs
digitized and where to put them and the setup experience. Again, I feel like
you definitely skipped over a lot of that detail. Maybe it's all done. I don't
know the extent to which you explored this. But it feels like many of those,
many of the power of this idea would come to life in those moments and the fact
that it would be a very successful service. And I'm sure would have actual real
commercial value if you could get those experiences nailed and really think
about that kind of, that long user experience from first touch to several years
later relative stumbling upon and hearing the story for the first time. So
there's some great work here. I encourage you to keep going. It's really
solid.
[Applause]
>>
Any questions from the audience?
Richard, thanks.
>> This is great. Really enjoyed it. I really like that idea particularly of
giving old devices a second life. That kind of renewal. I think one question
for you is actually about the future, as much about the system as it is
currently. Because what you're doing to some extent is building a system of
legacy. So there's a question about what happens to all this content and what
happens to all the artifacts when these people unfortunately have kind of passed
away. And I wonder what impact that has on how you think about the service. Is
there a commitment you can make to these kinds of services and systems that
maybe lasts 30, 40, 50 years as these objects become an important central part
of families to reminisce about people who are a part of their ancestry? Have
you thought at all about that, kind of the long-term of these kinds of systems.
>> We thought some about that. Mostly that we saw this as an experience for
these older people, but also really as an experience for ourselves too like if
you think about your grand parents and the kinds of stories that they have that
you haven't captured and they're getting older and older. So really any
generation below or after would benefit from that and so I guess for us it was
kind of also thinking of a different way to archive things that people share
with you. So every time we've shared this concept with people even personal
places we came from is oh I have a grandparent with Alzheimer or I have a
grandparent who was in World War II and these are all experiences that start
vanishing even before that person has passed away because those intricacies just
aren't there anymore. So, yes, I don't know if we understood your question
quite correctly, but I guess, yeah, we imagined that I guess no matter where
technology or systems that would hold this kind of content go there would be
people who want that there because you always will care about your own personal
family, and I think even business people who want to just like make money,
money, money, they always care about their family and that I guess was an
incentive.
>>
Even them.
>> Continue supporting this type of content.
the real.
Thinking about it practically, on
>>
Thank you.
>>
Hold on, Mike, there was a question in the back.
Kate Holmes.
>> Hey, beautiful project. Thanks for sharing. And I was interested to hear a
little bit more about your experience as designers through the course of this
project, because I do believe one of the most important pieces of inclusive
design is the inclusion of people in the process that both we as designers and
then also the people we work with in our designs change through the process of
creating some kind of solution. So I'm interested to hear kind of what it was
in your journey in spending that amount of time it was clear you had spent some
dedicated time understanding and getting to know the people you shared today.
So would love to hear more about that. How was that experience.
>> Yeah, absolutely. It was a really humbling experience to be able to kind of
be welcomed into the center and especially welcomed into Itchie and Yoko's home.
We really had a really nice, like, time doing this. We started to have like a
real meaningful relationship. We started -- we gave them flowers, and then some
of us graduated and they gave us graduation presents and then we cried in the
parking lot, for I kid you not, 15 minutes. So I guess on another note, it was
also kind of a frustrating experience because of how meaningful these short-term
visits and things like that were. It was frustrating we could only spend X
amount of time dedicated to research and spending time with these people and
that we want to be able to develop like longer research cycles or like periods
to this kind of work, especially with the idea of designing for accessibility.
>> I think the other thing that was sort of different about our process is that
we have this idea that you have to go in with this preconceived idea and then
you go and test it and see what it's like, and we went there without any idea
what we were going to see. We went there with a completely blank slate just to
spend time there. And the knitting circle, those kinds of things that we
observed turned into the idea itself. I don't know if I explained that very
well. But, yeah, that we didn't already go there with this concept in mind. I
think we really grew from that experience.
>> So along a similar line, I'm fascinated -- I haven't asked you this question
yet, but it's been in the back of my head. So you're probably 20-somethings who
likely fall asleep and the last thing to hit the floor is your cell phone or
your smartphone, right, because like all of us you're probably on it all the
time. And weirdly, the import of photographs to us has seemingly lost some of
its meaning. I mean, I think about an onion article that said girl finishes
uploading 1 million pictures to one week trip to Paris. Like we just constantly
flashing photographs to the point that it loses a great deal of meaning. When
you're embedded in the ethnographic research in the senior center, not crying in
the parking lot, and you see the importance that these photographs have to these
people as a not only as a memory but as a way of knitting together of an idea of
the life that they led, did that change your relationship with the way that
you're using photographs on your cell phones and the way you're taking Instagram
photos of your food, did it change your perception of that slightly.
>> I think maybe we haven't changed our perception, but thinking about the
potential for digital photographs is interesting. Our professor kind of put it
in this way that we're able to kind of make digital photographs physical again
and create artifacts out of them, even just with the photos not with the Loom
system.
>> I guess it kind of maybe has changed our perception or maybe this is
something we knew but kind of realized again, even though, yes, we're taking a
million pictures for a one week trip to Paris there's always that couple that
stands out. So for every 50 croissants there's one of me petting this dog that
reminds me of the dog that passed away that kind of sticks in my mind. I think
for me personally it was kind of even realizing we both went on a trip recently
to Asia even while being there which of these photos am I going to care about
later, is it the cool lights in the elevator or seeing the reaction of my
friends to those cool lights.
>>
Thank you.
Thank you so much UW.
[Applause]
>> Oh, this is a wrap. This was really a group effort. It was months of
liaisons and professors and students and volunteers working together. So it's
great to see it becoming all together and we all left inspired and hopefully
different designers. And we have a showcase tonight. So all the groups are
going to be in the showcase together with Imagine Cup students it's from six to
8:00 p.m. at the Thunder and Trident here on Building 92 and we also have
another showcase tomorrow. And Lilly wants to say something.
>> So thank you all for coming. Special thanks to a few people. Mike, who
comes here all the time and helps us and has spent the last couple of days
getting feedback.
[Applause]
And Carolyn, I don't know where she is. She's probably out there with Sara.
But say thanks to them on the way out. And special thanks to Melissa. Melissa.
[Applause]
Coordinating this. You're a liaison and you did all the brand and everything
and so thank you very much. It was awesome.
[Applause]
>> Thank you, Lilly. Thank you Lilly for being the sponsor and Curtis wonk to
actually starting Design Expo and thank you so much for our critics. You guys
were amazing.
[Applause]
And for Steve Konoco for having the party on Friday. I hope you guys can make
it. We heard that his house looks really nice. Thank you all. This is great.
[Applause]