Diarized Digital Scrapbook

Capturing children’s lived experiences in the pandemic through a digital time capsule.

Industry Challenge

The goal of this project was to create a Minimum Viable Product demonstrator (MVP) of a diarized digital scrapbook for familial units to record their lived experience during the COVID-19 pandemic and share within a virtual walled garden. 

The MVP will demonstrate the capacity to offer guided reassurance to children by providing authoring opportunities that are underpinned by educational and well-being pedagogy.

ADAPT Solution

In early 2020, Ancestry approached ADAPT to explore opportunities to create a diarised digital time capsule/scrapbook for children to record their lived experience through the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim was to capture the personal stories and insights about the impact of the pandemic on everyday life from first-hand witnesses providing a digital scrapbook for future generations.

Based on preliminary discussions with Ancestry, a number of possible user journeys were mapped and instantiated. During the time-period, the team developed a lightweight MVP of a digital time capsule/scrapbook that encompassed:

  1. Consideration for appropriate, applicable pedological theory,
  2. The capability to upload and share mixed media (images, video, audio, documents, etc.),
  3. An engaging user experience so that content could be easily shared with authorised family members, akin to a walled garden,
  4. A platform that enabled inter-generational users to share experiences,
  5. Platform that could handle high-level concurrent users, large amounts of data storage and could operate on desktop, tablets and smartphones.

 

The platform was structured to have mass appeal, encouraging cross- generational interactions, from grandparents to grandchildren of all ages, and be simple to use. Following a series of preliminary collaborative workshops, the initial scope of the project was defined as the creation and delivery of a MVP of a diarised digital scrapbook to Ancestry. The project began in May 2020 with the identification of appropriate approaches, designs and visualisations to help create a pedagogically sound digital scrapbook for children to record their COVID-19 experience.

Benefits/Impacts

  1. Societal impact via sharing experiences and providing online community during COVID-19. Technology helps users connect and engage remotely.
  2. Primary source of information for future generations.

 

Use Cases

This technology is relevant to every industry looking for real-time insights, from Ancestry through to education and healthcare.