The everyday collector

Graphical User Interfaces rely on visuals, visual being a strong stimulus. It can help recall memories for healthy persons. However our interaction with GUI only becomes spontaneous through training, training that comes later in life than the one of TUI. Thus, I believe our relationship to tangible is grounded deeper in our memory.

Tangible User Interfaces rely on the palpable and when coupled with other senses such as smell, sound becomes a strong stimulus. Patients suffering from Alzeimer's disease remember tangible interactions through interacting with objects. However they cannot remember using visuals, because a visual association requires the formation of a new memory to be perceived correctly. Alzeimer patients cannot associate the visual object presented to them with their memory of similar objects. With her inability to perceive the new visual association correctly, what does the individual resort to: touch.

Memory seemed tagged to tangible interaction. Interacting with TUI is then more natural than interacting with GUI.

As part of the everyday collector, the Odora Storyteller is a smell collector. It encompasses the experience of the everyday collector and creates an associative memory of smells, places and objects.

The first prototype is conceived for children to collect samples from their environment. The children can reveal and create associative connection between smells, textures and visual components of elements that they gather. The collected elements are then used to create and recall stories.

I now envision this concept for persons suffering from Alzheimer's disease. People with Alzheimer’s could benefit from associative memory between smell and souvenirs of places.

The smell collector becomes a collector of everyday sensations. The Everyday Collector allows a child to also collect temperatures - from the heat of the sun to the cold of the ice, invited to capture more complex temperature such as the soil or the smell of rain.

Created by Cati Vaucelle

at the Tangible Media Group, MIT Media Laboratory

Contact cati [ at ] media [ dot ] mit [ dot ] edu
Copyright (c) 2006-2008 MIT Media Lab. All rights reserved.