Understanding emotion for self-awareness requires recognizing not only its type and intensity but also the surrounding context and the insights it provides. While prior work has studied emotion recording, little attention has given to how such records might foster reflection on context. To address this gap, we developed Moodialogue, a system that enables users to personify emotion and engage in dialogue with it. In a six-week field study with nine participants, we found that personified emotion records supported dialogues that uncovered overlooked contexts and coexisting feelings beyond a single entry. Participants also reported savoring positive emotions more deeply and reframing negative ones from new perspectives. These findings point to design opportunities for systems that move beyond recording, enabling post-recording interactions that deepen reflection on emotional context and meaning.

Mood is influenced by complex factors and involves subjective interpretation, leading to diverse methods of recording it. While existing tools provide customizable features, they often fall short in promoting deep reflection and meaningful engagement. We developed Lino, an interactive system that includes single stroke drawing records created in a mobile app and a desktop frame designed for archiving these drawings and supporting the attachment of optional voice recordings. Through a three-week field study with six participants, we found that participants make meaning in the process of reframing their daily moods into single stroke drawings and continuously refined these recordings through interactions in their everyday spaces. Our findings imply considerations for empowering users through personal interpretation for meaning-making process in data collection and visualization for effective personal informatics system and supporting evolving personal reflective practices.

Accumulating a life history is a valuable resource for understanding self and reflecting on personal historical experience, which could be developed through diary writing. To facilitate the recording of past events in a diary, we designed and implemented Rebulb, a system that enables users to engage with reflective questions about proud moments and document memories evoked for accumulating one's life history. Our four-month field study with three participants showed that users intentionally and spontaneously recalled vague and wide memories during their daily activity and then concretized these memories by writing them down in a journal. The study also revealed that regardless of whether the memories were positive or negative, the current state of the user played a crucial role in how these memories were processed and reflected upon. Our finding imply consideration in designing a tool for supporting the recall and documentation of past experiences.

Capturing people’s spontaneous thoughts or daily emotions in their everyday living space can be difficult and can pose a psychological burden from a clinical standpoint. To address this issue, we have developed EmotionFrame, which allows users to archive their daily experiences by recording videos of their current thoughts and emotions at home. EmotionFrame serves as a journaling device, and the parameters for journaling have been determined based on a depression assessment model. This study explores the benefits of users’ recording feelings about their daily events, which can also help with assessing depressive mood with the journaling data. Our three-week in-field study with eight participants showed that EmotionFrame could be integrated into participants’ daily routines based on their previous diary-writing habits. In addition, its harmonious frame shape fits in with the everyday environment. Being able to engage in spontaneous journaling in private spaces – and in a way that allowed them to see themselves – prompted the study participants to effectively record their sincere thoughts and emotions during the archiving process.

Being a little more careful about the sound that people produce is difficult in shared houses because individuals can generate several unintended living noises and sounds. We designed Tunee to help each housemate better understand the others’ context and desired noise-level. It is an interactive speaker that allows people to share noise-level preferences through the position change of nodes. Our three-week in-field study with four groups of participants revealed that expressing noise-level preference through nodes reduced the burden of verbally delivering issues about the trivial noises of everyday life, and the intentions of the lowered preference were referred to and deemed significant. We also identified how participants figured out what behavior was acceptable for others according to each noise-level. Our findings imply considerations in designing interfaces to support coordinating behaviors and awareness of social contexts in shared spaces.

Although archiving daily moods in a diary is a common behavior, reflection is difficult because of the pressure brought about by continuous self-tracking of personal moods. In this paper, we developed Lumino, a standalone device that enables users to log their daily moods with colored lights and switch mode to show the log by physically sliding a circular lighting plate. The results of our three-week in-field study with six participants revealed that Lumino helped users encounter emotional archives as it separated reflective experiences from daily life activities. Moreover, Lumino helped prevent deep reflection on negative emotions and maintained privacy through abstract color expression. We also found user's various trials to control emotion reflections in their own usage patterns. We propose considerations for augmenting daily mood recording experiences combined with existing diary practices and further implications for designing how to support positively the negative reflections in everyday spaces.

The abundance of easily captured digital media and storing everything "just in case" has made it difficult for people to revisit them and have a rich reminiscence experience. To reinstate this value, we developed Slide2Remember, a wall photo frame enabling people to re-encounter their histories of digital photos and music. By physically sliding the device's front cover, users can hear songs that they had listened to in the same period when the photo was taken. From our four-week in-field study with 7 participants, we showed how Slide2Remember supported narrative remembering experiences of past moments and found detailed roles of each medium in the recall of life events. Moreover, the sliding interaction encouraged participants to begin their retrospection with anticipation and curiosity. Our findings imply considerations for providing a new recalling experience by overlaying one digital possession type over another and ways to encounter past data in everyday living spaces.

We introduce Monomizo, a tangible daily and monthly calendar in a concrete-casted desktop object that allows users to print out their daily schedules. Monomizo was designed to integrate the benefits of digital and paper-based scheduling by providing easy conversion of schedules in digital devices to analog media (e.g., paper). To investigate users' schedule management experience with Monomizo, we conducted an in-field study of 10 participants over 6 days. The results showed that Monomizo helped users to review and reflect on the day via the screen and through attaching, writing, and physically possessing printed schedules. We also found value in encountering digital information through analog-metaphoric design that provides ambient permeation of schedules. Based on the findings, our study offers new possibilities for designing a tangible artifact that facilitates users' effective planning and use of their days.

The experience of sound may be seen as fleeting or ephemeral, as it naturally disperses through space in waveforms unless recorded by media. We designed muRedder to reinstate the ephemerality of sound by shredding a song ticket that embeds a sound source while playing the song simultaneously. In this study, we explored ordinary music listening activities by turning intangible music content into tangible artefacts, making the music unable to be replayed, and representing the sound-fading process by shredding the ticket. We conducted a field study with 10 participants over seven days. The results showed that muRedder enabled users to focus solely on the music content and to actively find times to enjoy the music. We also found that limitedness of the media draws prudent decision in selecting music. By showing the process of consuming the invisible auditory content in a way that is tangibly perceivable, our findings imply new value for slow consumption of digital content and musical participation in public spaces.