News
Developments and announcements from the MMH project.
Recent Research 20th September 2010
Two continuing computing science students at the University of Glasgow were funded jointly by the MultMemoHome Project and the MATCH project to work with Marilyn McGee-Lennon over the summer of 2010 on projects to design reminders for the home.
Carole Grieve, progressing into her fourth year of her degree worked with older users to create applications for the home that take advantage of Smart Pen technology. The digital pen and special paper enables people to label items around the home, record spoken messages when writing on the paper, and play back the messages when the pen is pointed at the written message. Using a focus group, we looked at how people might use the pen and paper to remind themselves to do things (calendars and diaries), label items around the home with extra instructions on how to use them (such as labeling a TV remote control) and even annotate instructions onto medication labels to remind them when and how to take their pills during the course of a day. Carol's poster presenting her findings can be viewed here.
Ross McLachlan, progressing into his Masters year conducted an empirical study with users to test the 'learnability' and memorability of short musical snippets for reminding people to do things around the home. The lab based study asked people to remember 4 pieces of music and then associate each with a household object (keys, door, medicine, bin). During the testing phase, users were played the short musical clips and asked to press the button corresponding to the object that reminder was for. Users were also played speech reminders to compare recall for abstract reminders (the music clips) with recall for explicit speech instructions. In addition, the music clips were of varying lengths (0.2 secs, 0.5 sec, 1 sec) to test how short a clip can be without becoming too difficult to recognize or recall, and without it becoming too long to be useful as a reminder. Results showed that all the music clips had high recognition rates, even after users were tested after a further week had passed. People's memory for and associations with music are complex and therefore we propose further research into how music can be sampled to produce useful and acceptable abstract reminders. Ross presented his results in a poster which can be viewed here.
Falkirk Focus Group 19th February 2010
We've been running focus groups in Glasgow and Edinburgh with older people and people with sensory impairments, and we've received some really insightful and interesting information about the things people forget and how they remember. We'd love to hear your opinions too!
Our next focus group will be held in the Forth Valley Sensory Services in Falkirk on Thursday 4th March.
To take part, please get in touch with Marilyn McGee-Lennon via our Contact Us page, or via telephone at 0141-330-6034.
Forth Valley Sensory Services is located at Redbrae Road, Falkirk, FK1 4DD. The map below should help you find it.
View Larger Map
New Year News 22nd January 2010
Happy New Year from everyone here at MultiMemoHome! MMH got off to a good start in 2009, but we've also got a lot to look forward to in 2010.
We held two focus groups in December at the University of Glasgow, which provided some really insightful and interesting information. Our next focus group will be held in the University of Edinburgh on Tuesday 2nd February from 14:00 to 15:30. We'll also be holding one in the Forth Valley Sensory Services Centre in Falkirk between late February and early March.
To take part in either of these focus groups please get in touch with Marilyn McGee-Lennon via our 'contact us' page, or via telephone at 0141-330-6034.
Our web-based survey has received a great response, but we need more! If you have 10 minutes to spare, we'd love for you to fill out our anonymous survey. For more information about this or other ways to help our research, check out our 'get involved' page.
Surveys and Focus Groups 30th November 2009
We've started running surveys and focus groups to gather information for the project. If you're interested in participating, take a look at our get involved page, which has all the details you'll need.
Official MMH Kick-Off Meeting 23rd November 2009
The official MMH Kick-off meeting was held in Glasgow University today.
