Evaluating Access Mechanisms for Multimodal Representations of Lifelogs

Lifelogging, the automatic and ambient capture of daily life activities into a digital archive called a lifelog, is an increasingly popular activity with a wide range of applications areas including medical (memory support), behavioural science (analysis of quality of life), work-related (auto-recording of tasks) and more. In this paper we focus on lifelogging where there is sometimes a need to re-find something from one’s past, recent or distant, from the lifelog. To be effective, a lifelog should be accessible across a variety of access devices. In the work reported here we create eight lifelogging interfaces and evaluate their effectiveness on three access devices; laptop, smartphone and e-book reader, for a searching task. Based on tests with 16 users, we identify which of the eight interfaces are most effective for each access device in a known-item search task through the lifelog, for both the lifelog owner, and for other searchers. Our results are important in suggesting ways in which personal lifelogs can be most effectively used and accessed.