Hello everyone my name is Dina Sabie and on behalf on behalf of my co-workers at the University of Toronto
and Cornell University I'll be presenting our paper
Memory through Design:
Supporting culture identity for immigrants through a paper-based home drafting tool
Over the past few years we've had a great work that has been done in HCL with immigrants that covers various topics to
understand the challenges they face in their resettlement countries and design computational supports accordingly.
Unfortunate, most of the current research in this field focuses on newcomers’ practical needs, i.e., how to provide
immigrants with access to information and services for daily activities while the emotional, social, and cultural needs of
migrants which has an enormous effect on the life experience of both the migrants themselves
and the hosting communities remain unaddressed.
An important container of someone's culture identity is a domestic spaces they occupy.
Houses are studies HCI through the concept of placemaking so reinventing spaces to
create new realities. However, a sense of place within domestic settings is inherently complex
because a place is not only a lived reality in its physical sense, but also of past spaces,
inhabitants’ own experience and hopes. In other words, a house becomes a place
when it is made from “memories, values, and emotions”.
As such we need to have a deeper understanding of how memory advices placemaking and to do so we turn to
Halbwachs's work on Collective Memory which is defined as reminiscence that narrates previous events
and experiences by the virtue of being part of a group they identified by (such as family or society)
When someone faces a life-changing event such as becoming a migrant,
scholars argue that people turn to Collective Memory because it does not only reflect
past experiences but it also has orientational function to reflect on once's self and find resilience.
Collective Memory comprised of three dimensions social memory that relate to people,
material which is linked to artifacts, and mental memory which is cognition.
Now Interacting with an artifact can effectively support reminiscence. However, the process of making
can be a better approach for reminiscing because, as scholars argue, the process of design and creation
inherently stimulates memories of people, places, relationships, events,activities, and other things, and moves the maker closer to
their true “self” by enabling them to tell something about themselves and their lives through the things they create.
This paper makes three contributions: FIRST it fills in the gap in HCI discourse on immigrants
which emphasizes functionality as we highlight the emotional needs of migrants which is central for long-term settlement
SECOND we do this by advancing research on HCI design with memory by creating an augmented design tool
that supports spatial recall through simple paper sketching and 3D modeling.
and Lastly, using our tool and study we offer an original insight into the domestic relations fostered
by space configuration which reflect cultural identities and cohesion of our immigrants.
To create an effective tool for reminiscence in connection with placemaking we developed
a tool called "Our Homes Sketcher
There exist several free interactive digital platforms
which allow users design and visualize houses we wanted to provide a simple interface that
is easy to use, playful, entertaining and something that supports freedom of expression so
a template that a user user can freely reflect on past and current experiences and future aspirations
So based on these design philosophies and based on my own and my co-author, Samar's, design experience
as we both have background in architectural design we developed "Our Home Sketcher": a paper-based
kit that guides users to design and sketch houses purely with paper, pencils, stickers, and tangible
stencils. Image processing is then used to turn the sketches into 3D models for clear visual representation.
The interface for our tool is a 16-page kit that has instructions on
how to use the tool and some sample designs
Plus some very basic stationary utensils such as white papers, construction papers, cutouts, pencils, and so on
To use the tool you start with a white paper which has a scale grid for reference
you then sketch the outline of the house you want to design in plan-view
Then you add stickers of the opening. Each shape defines a type of opening so a triangle is
a door and a rectangle is a window.
Take a picture of the sketch and run the picture in a computer program that we developed
that identifies colors and shapes to generate a 3D model out of the paper sketch
To test our approach
We recruited 13 immigrants who have been in Canada for 1 to 3 years,almost equal male to female ratio,
with age range of 18 to 45. 8 of them have higher education. Their occupations are different and
all of them came from Eastern cultures. We used the tool we developed as a cultural probe
to trigger memory associated with placemaking through design. Most studies were in groups of 2
to 3 people and lasted 2 to 3 hours. Our study had two phases: the first part was a user study
where our participants used the tool and sketched their dream homes which were digitally processed
to generate the 3D models. During the second phase, we interviewed the participants and
ask about their experience in using the tool, the decisions been informed their designs,
and their thoughts on the 3D models
We collected three types of data: observations of our participants during the design phase,
interviews which we code based on Collective Memory, and lastly, participants' final designs which we
analyzed by commenting on the designs for contextual insights and understanding the
underlying meanings of space distribution
Now we used Halbwachs’ collective memory to analyze and frame the designs our participants did
First, we establish the social memory in the designs. In all of our participants' designs
we saw the presence of some cultural values or representation not present in North America
namely multi-generational house, clear physical divided between what is public (such as
the guest room) and what his private (such as the kitchen), and central communal area.
For example, in the design we see here from a female doctor where she creates a main entrance to
the left which divides the house into first: the public sector at the top with the formal
living/dining area which has limited access to the rest of the house and second: the
private sector to the bottom and right of the house which has an open flow for the family.
Something to note here as well is that our female participants provided more detailed
thoughts of designs because in many eastern cultures, home design describes a women’s
identity as it is an expression of her family status and personal relationships.
A house for our participants is not only a dorm, but it is also a location for domestic social gathering,
exchanging expertise, holding events (such as engagement parties), and much more.
It is for the whole extended family, neighbors, and close friends. We noticed that there
that there was a strong longing for people who lived back home. They would either refer to their family
members preferences or implement design features that supported interaction with these
members. Kitchen was emphasized by all of our participants as a place to hold intimate conversations
and the produced kitchen designs focused on making it have lots of nature light and
space for family seating, which apparently is not a common design layout in eastern countries.
Mother were discussed in all the sessions in one way or another.
This can be due to the degree of authority mothers have on their children in
eastern culture where women are still stronger attached to domestic settings. One of our
participants explains: "I miss my mom so bad I was thinking of her ... my father passed away four
years ago and ever since then my mom and I have become very close ... we were having
conversations in the kitchen while she was cooking and I tell her about my day ...
I really wanted to have these spaces in my house and invited mom here to share those moments again and again
Second, we link between the implemented layouts and the materiality of spaces our participants have experienced.
First off are the cultural features in their home countries.
Several of the produced designs draw from traditional houses from the participants’ home countries
even though none of our newcomers had lived in such traditional configurations
namely first a courtyard (as seen before) which offers outdoor privacy or even if
it is roofed it offers a central communal space.
Second, separate entrances for the guests and the family household so there would be
two doors: one for the guests that goes into the formal living room while the other one
opens into the kitchen and/or family spaces. And Lastly, this concept of un-cubism so a
house would have multiple edges which is common in some eastern cultures as seen here
in a design by a grad student participant.Unfortunately, with mass house production in North America to lower
dwelling costs, house tend to more or less have a box-like shape and look similar to one another.
Now our participants consider what they liked and disliked about their previous and current homes.
First, they enjoyed their previous houses’ layouts such as the relationship between
the living room, bedrooms, and balcony/garden. About half of our participants said that
their pre-migration homes afforded more spaces, but the other half noted that because they
had to share bedrooms and bathrooms with other family members because non-married
family adult, and in some cases married adults, had to live in the family home.
As such, most of our participants created more bedrooms and bathrooms than what they had originally.
Due to space limitations of current places of residence, multifunctionality is a must.
For example, the dining table acts as a study desk and a food server. This multi-usage led
our newcomers to feel that they are temporary in this space. Hence, all the sketched houses
had dedicated rooms or spaces for offices and other side chores.
And finally the mental dimension Collective Memory reveals the cognitive beliefs
and desires of a person when they recall social or material memories. Now the drafting
sessions provoked mixed mental states.The first thing we noticed, and our participants told us
was that the house sketching process was fun and they starting telling us and exchanging
with other participants in the design group stories about their families back home,
domestic practices, future plans, and even their childhood. This was because they were designing
a house which is a very familiar object to them as they experience it daily.
Moreover, pen, paper, construction papers, and gluing things was something that they have
last done during their childhood. Ina matter of fact three kids from our participants
kids liked what their parents were doing that they wanted to use the tool too so
we gave them the chance to try it out.
Lastly, the design process offered our participants the autonomy to choose what to recall,
how past experiences can influence the designs, and what values they want to sense again.
This aspect of gaining control back to their lives which they lost due to mobility was
a great experience for them. Unfortunately the design sessions were stressing for our
migrants to when they started comparing the designs they created to their realities,
which is rooted in the migration experiences itself. Some discussions turn into eulogies of
past events such as continuous mobility, temporality and loss of home like what this male participant
told us: "Honesty, this is bittersweet. You know how another participant talked about the story of our
home and how we built and tore walls ourselves, this is very emotional because we
stayed in the house for 10 months and then we left due to war… but yeh, you
remember your old house, the kids, the dream house”
Many of our participants, especially men, kept referring to the high cost of housing, land, and
customization in Canada, and the struggle of finding rent due to credit check especially for newcomers.
Ok now these findings point us to important HCI implications
HCI research have done work in studying the complex relationships between humans and everyday artifacts which
go beyond function and design. Unfortunately, we do not see similar work done with
vulnerable population or people in distress, especially when using probes as part of
the research methodology. The sketching tool we developed for this study acted as a
cultural probe and offered our immigrants the agency to reclaim their relationships with
physical spaces that were lost or weaken due to mobility. We recommend that the HCI
community consider this post-humanistic relationship that exist with certain artifacts
when working with migrants.
The sketching process we implemented helped participants to not only draw from the past
but also reflect on their present state. In other words, the past and the present exist
in one design sheet which is similar to the Buddhist art of conflated narrative. Unlike
instant recalls through interviews or interacting with static probe, paper sketching
offered our participants the time to reflect on their current and past lives as they draw,
erased, and re-sketch things of what they want or don’t want to experience. Hence, future HCI research
with migrants should consider the memorial values embodied in the “making” process.
Because obtaining detailed information from immigrants is challenging (due to language
or privacy for example), the process of design can be a method for gaining deeper knowledge
about them. We were able to dive deeper and get more information because: the newcomers were
designing something very familiar to them and experience daily, so they did not have
to overthink. And because by augmenting familiar concepts (such as sketching, housing)
with technology (such as visualization), we successfully provided a middle ground
to foster creativity and support fast feedback
In terms of broader lessons for HCI, Our study illustrates that standardized architecture in North America
is far from accommodating the needs of immigrants due to layout designs. As Paul Dourish has
argued that our sense of place is generated from “within” by the virtue of interacting with
the physical place around us rather than imposed from outside. Considering there is a lack of research
in HCI about house design for immigrants, researchers can work with architects to design tools
that can foster clearer communication between the immigrants and the designers or propose interventions
that depend on existing restrictions and take what is existing to its maximum potentials.
Considering the mass migration that is happening globally, we believe that it is crucial to
focus not only on functionality but also on empowering people through acknowledging
their values and experiences because it is important when it comes to building one’s self
and wellbeing. Moreover, if we want to have a pluralistic society, we need to allow people to
live with their cultural principles. Hence, more research in HCI should aim to understand newcomers’ cultural identity.
To conclude, we mended a gap in migration HCI research and
studied the cultural identity of immigrants within domestic settings. We did this by
developing a paper-based augmented home drafting tool to investigate the role house
sketching can play to narrate memories and foster agency for the newcomers.
The tool we developed helped immigrants express what they wanted clearly and freely without the
need for extensive verbal communication due to the tool familiar, simple, and playful
interface. Moreover, it helped us dive deeper into their domestic relations without the need for extensive verbal communication.
Future work in HCI with immigrants should consider the value of personal identity and
memory for migrants in long-term settlement process and aim to design for it.
To this end, and on behalf of my collogue, we thank you all of listening and please
free to email us any inquiry you have about this paper or our work in general