It’s a bit over a week since the workshop on Forgetful Interfaces. I proposed the workshop because I had a feeling that simply storing the data we collect about ourselves may not be such a good idea. To my joy and surprise, all proposed workshops happened, including mine! However, because my thoughts on Forgetful Interfaces were still uncrystallized, I decided to turn the workshop into a discussion. And what a discussion it was. Thanks to all of you who took part, it was truly amazing.

Now, originally I had approached the subject from the perspective of privacy, which turned out to be perhaps the least interesting aspect of forgetful interfaces. We’ve arrived at three different aspects, and there is a fourth one which was introduced to me, outside of the workshop, by Irwin Oostindie. These aspects are privacy, filtering, user experience and security (the latter proposed by Irwin). But, first of all, what is a forgetful interface? In my view, a forgetful interface hides artifacts from view. Here I’ve used the term artifacts rather than data, because forgetful interfaces are about data in a social context. I’m specifically not talking about deleting the artifacts. They’re still there, just harder to get at. Just like how you may forget things yourself, but given enough clues your brain can bring them back.

So, with that out of the way, let’s look at the aspects of forgetful interfaces.