Research – Exploring Childhood Memories, Audiences and Interactive Storytelling - Sofiia Kasimova

 

Research – Exploring Childhood Memories, Audiences and Interactive Storytelling


What did I do?

Everyone on the team did a bit of research across four areas: cultural memories, target audience, existing products, and media design. I used published studies and real platforms and kept the 2–3 strongest examples per area. This is all secondary research, interviews come next.

What did I discover?

1. Cultural & Personal Memories

Culture shapes how we remember childhood. Research suggests Americans often focus on themselves, while Chinese participants focus more on family and relationships (Lang, 2001). Knowing family stories can also help teens build self-esteem (Emory University, 2010). These memories are “ungoogleable” because they live in conversations, not online.

2. Target Audience

Sharing memories can help people feel closer. Nostalgia can give life more meaning through connection with others (Routledge et al., 2011), and Europeana users felt more positive about their identity after sharing stories (Europeana, 2019). For older relatives, simple navigation matters because drop-down menus can be difficult for people new to using a mouse (W3C, n.d.). We still need to check whether students, families and people living away from home are our main audience.

3. Existing Products

Dúchas.ie collected traditions from parents and grandparents through Irish schoolchildren in 1937. The handwritten stories are now online (Dúchas, n.d.). It preserves real family knowledge, but feels more like an archive than an experience.



StoryCorps shares questions and tips for recording conversations. It suggests starting with easy questions and ending with more reflective ones (StoryCorps, n.d.). The method is personal and easy to use, but the audio can be difficult to browse.


Europeana Migration invites people to share an object, such as a photo, letter or recipe, along with its story. A collection day took place at Cork City Library in 2019 (Europeana, n.d.). The object-and-story format works well, though the site can feel like a database.




4. Media & Experience Design

Scroll-based stories can hold people’s attention without feeling as demanding as plain text (Méndez and Such, 2026). The examples above show how real voices, objects and handwriting make stories feel personal. Any animation should also have a reduced-motion option (W3C, n.d.).



What decision did I make?

  • Use “Do You Know?” and StoryCorps questions to guide interviews.
  • Pair each object with its story and an optional voice clip.
  • Show memories from different cultures side by side.
  • Create a scrolling scrapbook instead of a searchable archive.
  • Keep it easy to use with large buttons, captions and reduced motion.


What feedback did I receive?

I haven’t received formal feedback yet. I’ll share this with the team and bring it to our next tutorial, then update this post.

What did I do next?

  • Bring our findings together and choose 2–3 examples for each area.
  • Write a guide with 6–8 interview questions.
  • Each of us will record 1–2 short interviews with someone from a different cultural background.
  • Create a form for sharing a photo or object and a childhood tradition.
  • Sketch a scrolling layout and a page-flip layout before the 3 November presentation.

Limits: all secondary so far. Our own interviews are what will make this Ungoogleable.

References

Dúchas (no date) The Schools' Collection. National Folklore Collection, UCD. Available at: https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes 

Emory University (2010) Children benefit from knowing stories about relatives. Phys.org, 3 March. Available at: https://phys.org/news/2010-03-children-benefit-relatives.html 

Europeana (2019) Looking back at the Europeana Migration campaign. Europeana Pro. Available at: https://pro.europeana.eu/post/looking-back-at-the-europeana-migration-campaign  

Lang, S.S. (2001) Americans and Chinese recall memories very differently, indicating the impact of cultures on 'self-concept'. Cornell Chronicle. Available at: https://news.cornell.edu/node/279832 .

Méndez, G.G. and Such, J. (2026) 'Scrollytelling as an alternative format for privacy policies', CHI 2026. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.04367 

Routledge, C. et al. (2011) 'The past makes the present meaningful: nostalgia as an existential resource', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(3), pp. 638–652. Available at: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/183875 

StoryCorps (no date) Tips for a great conversation. Available at: https://storycorps.org/participate/tips-for-a-great-conversation/ 

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (no date) Older users and web accessibility. Available at: https://www.w3.org/wai/older-users/ 


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