Technology Heirlooms

Unlike sentimental objects that people can’t bring themselves to discard, people tend to keep phones and laptops for just a few years before disposing of them. The Socio-Digital Systems team within Microsoft Research wanted to understand why some objects become sentimental while others don’t, hoping to apply research findings in this area to the design of sentimental digital artifacts.

Credits: Richard Banks, Abigail Sellen, Sian Lindley, Phil Gosset and  Richard Harper of Microsoft Research (United Kingdom); David Kirk of Nottingham University (United Kingdom) and William Odom of Carnegie Mellon Universit

Contact: Richard Banks: rbanks@microsoft.com