CHI 2007: Software or Wetware

CHI 2007

Software or Wetware? Discovering When

and Why People Use Digital Prosthetic Memory

Vaiva Kalnikaitė , Steve Whittaker

This paper investigates the use of prosthetic memory (both electronic and traditional) vs the use of organic memory. They compared usage of their journaling system, ChittyChatty, an audio recorder, organic memory and pencil and paper notes. They evaluated the four over a period of 1 to 30 days, asking users about the perceived efficiency, usability and accuracy of the systems.

As a result, the studies found that people like the ease of use of organic memory and pencil and paper over the short term, but that these degraded quickly in their usability and accuracy over time. They also found that their system ChittyChatty was generally well liked.

While their studies are interesting, especially for design of memory aid devices, I found their ChittyChatty system most interesting. It is a free hand note taking software that also records audio simultaneously, associating text notes with the audio recorded at the time. I think that would be extremely useful in the context of classes because you could essentially manually index the audio so you know where certain events occurred. Then you can quickly go back and listen to the audio for more details instead of having to write all the details at once.