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Easy on that trigger dad: a study of long term family photo retrieval

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Abstract

We examine the effects of new technologies for digital photography on people’s longer term storage and access to collections of personal photos. We report an empirical study of parents’ ability to retrieve photos related to salient family events from more than a year ago. Performance was relatively poor with people failing to find almost 40% of pictures. We analyze participants’ organizational and access strategies to identify reasons for this poor performance. Possible reasons for retrieval failure include: storing too many pictures, rudimentary organization, use of multiple storage systems, failure to maintain collections and participants’ false beliefs about their ability to access photos. We conclude by exploring the technical and theoretical implications of these findings.

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Notes

  1. There were no statistically significant differences in retrieval success (t(64) = 0.42, p > 0.05), or retrieval time (t(64) = 0.56, p > 0.05), between the tasks suggested by the participants and the ones suggested by the interviewer, so we combine results here.

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Acknowledgments

We thank our participants for their time and efforts. This research was funded by the European Union Marie Curie Grant, TOK 30008 (Memoir). The authors are solely responsible for the content of this paper. It does not represent the opinion of supporting funding agencies, and the supporters are not responsible for any use that might be made of data appearing therein.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield, S10 2TN, Sheffield, UK

    Steve Whittaker, Ofer Bergman & Paul Clough

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  1. Steve Whittaker
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  2. Ofer Bergman
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  3. Paul Clough
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Correspondence to Steve Whittaker.

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Whittaker, S., Bergman, O. & Clough, P. Easy on that trigger dad: a study of long term family photo retrieval. Pers Ubiquit Comput 14, 31–43 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-009-0218-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-009-0218-7

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