Thanks for the memory

In the summer of 2007, my BBC Wales colleagues Carwyn Evans, Lisa Heledd, Robin Moore and I worked with Microsoft Research Centre via Participate in the testing of a prototype wearable camera called Sensecam.

Carwyn and Lisa gave Sensecam cameras and laptops to six people from south Wales from different backgrounds and with varying experience of digital media. They worked with Dave Randall and the teams at Microsoft Research, Participate and BBC Research & Innovation on a series of suggested tasks to test what it feels like to walk around all day with a device around your neck that captures automatic pictures every minute or less – and more often when you move or the light changes.

Before devising tasks we needed to work out for ourselves what the camera could do. Here’s a piece of reflective video I made myself using the Sensecam and the supplied software to make the visuals. I recorded the audio using a Nokia N93, edited the Sensecam image sequences into an .avi file using the supplied software and then edited the whole thing in iMovie.

Click To Play

 

I’m publishing this clip now that the findings of the experiment have been written up and published in the form of Harper, R., Randall, D., Smyth, N., Evans, C., Heledd. L. and Moore. R. Thanks for the Memory. HCI 2007. (Best paper award.)