Jogging happy memories

Each day, more than 90 million people visit Facebook’s "Memories" page, a product the company developed to remind people about their past family vacations, gatherings with friends, major life milestones, and the full range of moments shared on Facebook.

Leading this effort is psychologist and user-experience researcher Artie Konrad, PhD, who specializes in technology­mediated reflection, or using technology to support reminiscence, something Facebook has found that people want more of in their digital lives.

"Our goal is to create a delightful experience," says Konrad. "It’s a little bit of joy in your day to see a memory of a friend that you hung out with years ago. From my research before I joined Facebook, we know that reminiscence increases mood and well-being. When we do research at Facebook, we’re finding out what our users hope to get from the experience and figuring out how we can help them revisit the past in exciting ways."

What does your role entail?

I am a bridge between the people who are using our products and the people who are developing them. My goal is to create a space to allow everyone at Facebook to think bigger, to step outside their roles and consider the people they’re designing for. I say to our team, "These are the things that you are trying to work out, so how does that translate into clear research questions?" Then I conduct multi-method research to find out how users are thinking and feeling about our products. I encourage all team members to observe the research so they’re part of the process.

Another important element of my job is communicating those findings in a way that’s digestible to my colleagues who may not have a research background.

How did you become interested in this area?

In 2011, I started graduate school in cognitive psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. My adviser, Steve Whittaker, was interested in technology and memory, while I was interested in well-being. At first, I wondered how could these areas ever come together? Steve assured me that we would find a satisfying overlap between our interests.

As it turned out, the deeper I went into the research literature, the more I realized how interwoven these fields are. For example, technology provides new opportunities to help us remember our pasts, which can have a positive impact on our well-being. So, I focused my PhD research on reminiscence and technology. Steve and I coined a term for this: technology-mediated reflection, or TMR.

Our work included developing and researching TMR smartphone apps like MoodAdaptor and Echo. Echo, for instance, enabled people to record everyday experiences, by journaling and taking photographs, and rate how they felt about those experiences, and it prompted people to reflect on them at a later time. Our research showed that reminiscing with technology can reconnect people with positive emotions and increase long-term well-being. TMR apps were the tools we used to understand these psychological processes.

How did you come to work at Facebook?

While working on my PhD, I applied for a summer internship at Facebook in 2014. I worked on the Messenger app, exploring how people express themselves with stickers and emoji.

At the time, Facebook had recently developed its first video memory products, "Lookback" and "Say Thanks," which told stories by combining photo with video memories, music and simple designs. I offered to do research for that team on the side and ended up developing a quick study of what kinds of memories people enjoyed revisiting.

I returned in 2015 for a second internship, working on the "On This Day" product to better define our role in reminiscence. "On This Day" is now part of "Memories," a single place on Facebook to reflect on the moments you’ve shared with family and friends, including posts and photos, friends you’ve made, and major life events. Facebook offered me my current job and I started in 2016 after I earned my PhD.

What was it like moving from academia to Facebook?

It was super exciting. I completed more stages of research that summer than I could ever hope to complete in a year in academia. It was particularly gratifying to apply my academic research background to help set the road map for the development of "Memories" on Facebook and provide that research context.

How has your research shaped Memories on Facebook?

From past research, we knew our users wanted a way to easily revisit these memories from their timelines. But when "On This Day" launched in 2015, we didn’t yet know what people wanted from the experience. What types of memories did they want to see? How often? I’ve since conducted 15 studies to help answer these questions. We’ve discovered there are certain types of posts most people prefer not to see again as memories, such as accidents or failed ventures. We’ve invested heavily in ways to identify such memories and filter them out. We’ve also found people wanted more control over what they see because these memories are personal and complex. So, we developed preferences that allow you to filter out dates and people, and later added some features to make those filters more accessible.

New product ideas have been directly and organically inspired by hearing people talk about what they wanted from their "On This Day" experience. One thing we frequently hear is that people want to see more recent memories. That’s why we developed a new memories experience that generates monthly and seasonal photo recaps of recent events, like your summer or the holiday season.

You’ve described part of your role as being a sensible steward of memories. What makes a sensible steward?

When we’re designing for millions of people, we don’t want to treat memories as data. We want to treat them as personal memories and not lose sight of the individual. One way I help the team is by having conversations about what memory is. We draw on research and even pop culture to identify our own relationships with memory and its complexities. That develops a tremendous empathy for the people using our products, so we’re hopefully infusing humanity and thoughtfulness into every aspect of creating them. It’s a process of understanding and a North Star we’re working toward.