I entered this study aiming to design objects and experiences that could be more memorable to their users, and I leave it understanding that participation and co-authorship are key factors in that process. Memory aids, including methods such as mnemonics and the use of technological gadgets, can only enhance a user’s personal engagement with information. As a designer I hope to visually articulate opportunities, clues and structures that allow for and invite interpretive and participant storytelling. Hopefully I will be able to unify my past education and interests in anthropology, visual arts, and graphic design to become a designer who considers human behaviors in the use of interfaces, products and places.

Completing this thesis I can look back and reflect on the things I have learned: that tricking the mind is just as important as structuring it; and that remembering and forgetting are two parts of the same process of memory, and are at their best when in tension with one another. Steven Pinker summed up his chapter on The Mind’s Eye, with this intriguing quote. “A picture is worth a thousand words, but that is not always such a good thing. At some point between gazing and thinking, images must give way to ideas,” (298). With any luck, a design thesis about memory, remembering and forgetting, is a step in this direction.