Curatorial Agents: How Systems Shape Our Understanding of Personal and Familial Digital Information

As people increasingly turn to digital channels to share, store, and reflect on their lives and experiences, the processes by which they manage the diverse collection of information generated over the course of their lives are changing. These processes, once a matter of hands-on curation and personal meaning making, are now deeply rooted in interactions with digital systems. In this work, we drew from prior research from personalization, memory, and information management to create four interactive, provocative systems. Through sessions with 12 adults from Pittsburgh, PA we used a combination of these systems and interviews to examine how systems might play a role in the near and long term resurfacing of personal and familial digital information. Findings point to an opportunity to create systems that can openly mediate the curation and transmission of digital content, and ways to draw meaning from the differences between how systems and people recall and represent their experiences.