Designing for memories
I do a lot of reading, and recently I’ve struggled to balance the desire to read new books with the need to document my reading better. I find that when I concentrate solely on reading things, I don’t really absorb the knowledge fully. Since the main reason I read things is to reference that knowledge later, this is a problem.
One way that I try to improve my retention is by taking notes on the books I read. Reviewing the notes later, the theory goes, will spark memories of the experience and remind me of the important knowledge I need. Does it work? I don’t know. For some reason (probably because I don’t write very compelling notes), I never go back and review them.
Other methods I’ve tried for improving my absorption rate include trying to insert quotes or examples from the books I’m reading in my conversations with others (since we learn [95% of what we teach to someone else](http://members.shaw.ca/priscillatheroux/Glasser.htm)); reading a book once for the overall view and then a second time for note-taking; and “reading” audio books so that I can concentrate less on the mechanics of reading and more on the concepts of the book. Occasionally one book will be extra memorable–but it’s usually due to the author or content, not the method I’ve used to read it.
On a broader level, this makes me wonder if as designers we should design products for the instantaneous experience or the memories people will have of it later. If the latter, we should leverage our understanding of how memories work to improve the lasting value of our experiences.
Daniel Kahneman has done interesting research on how our memories work. He has found that we typically remember two things about an experience: the peak moment, and the ending state. In [one famous experiment](http://www.accelerated-learning-online.com/research/memories-colonoscopy-randomized-trial.asp) he artificially extended the length of a colonoscopy procedure for a subset of patients by leaving the instruments inside after the procedure–a less painful state than the rest of the procedure, but still one that is mildly painful. It turns out that because the less painful portion was now the ending state for the patients, instead of the highly painful peak state of the regular procedure,they rated their overall experience (based on their memories of it) as *less* painful than the regular procedure, even though the total “amount” of pain was greater.
Kahneman spoke about this in [an interview with Australia’s ABC Radio](http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2003/923773.htm):
> The experiencing subject we think of as life is a sequence of many moments…anywhere between say half a second and three seconds depending on different definition. Now there are about 20,000 moments of three seconds in a 16-hour day so this is what life consists of, it consists of a sequence of moments. And each of these moments is actually very rich in experience…[But] what happens to these moments? And of course they’re lost forever, they’re lost without a trace mostly, that is we don’t remember, we keep memories very selectively, what actually happens to us so the experiencing subject I would say hardly has time to exist.
> The subject that has permanence is the remembering subject; life from the point of view of the remembering subject is a very different thing…It’s a narrative…so there are moments that count, there are beginnings, there are peaks, there are endings and that’s how we think of our own stories and of our own life…*the remembering subject is the one that keeps score and it’s also the one who makes the decisions*.
When you understand that, it’s easier to think of ways to design experiences for better memories. For instance, understanding that we remember most the peak feelings and ending feelings of experiences led my wife and I to take our vacations in different ways–shorter, with a more intense peak and a better, longer relaxation at the end (as a side benefit, that’s also cheaper). Similarly, it speaks to the direction of smaller, more focused products that have a clearly-defined key action, and the fact that one killer (or problematic) feature can define the entire experience for people. My favorite part is the fact that a good ending, something that’s often ignored in favor of basic functionality or the initial advertised experience, makes up a large portion of the memories.
Implementations of these strategies will vary widely between various product types. Software will have to design differently than physical products, which themselves will be different than immersive experiences. But the general theories are fascinating to me, and it will be interesting to experiment on my projects with designing for memories.
Will it fix my experience with books? Unfortunately I think it will be up to the books to determine that…but I’ll continue trying to fix my memory with any tricks I can. And maybe I’ll pick up a few fun books that I don’t need to remember the specifics of. Now where’d I put my copy of _The Da Vinci Code_?