memo:random is an approach to designing experiences in which a designer and a reader co-author a work by participating in a dynamic exercise of remembering, forgetting, and imagining. Memo, short for memorandum, or a reminder, represents the structured way that people, in their minds, construct logical order; random, represents the unpredictable, automatic, and emotional responses that people have to things in the world that trigger memories. Designers as storytellers can provide stimuli that allow logical structure to converge with invention and imagination, making readers more aware of their cognitive engagement in the process.

This investigation is fuelled by my curiosity about how the mind creates associations. The axes of reality and fiction, perception and illusion, and reason and absurdity, are departure points from which I design narrative experiences for print, screen, and environments. Philosophers, writers, artists, historians and cognitive scientists approach the subject of memory from different perspectives and with various motivations; however, in this study, these perspectives necessarily converge to help explain the phenomena of the gain and loss of personal memory, as well as collective memory.

With memory as a starting point for engaging with content, designers can integrate the traditional storytelling roles in which audiences interpret and discover; content-providers craft concrete matter, such as images and words; and designers edit, organize and provoke wonder. The end result is a working methodology that I can carry forward in my aim to incorporate these aspects of human behavior into complex narrative works.