NoBits
Reminiscing is a pleasurable activity for seniors and can improve their well being by providing rich opportunities for communication with peers and family. The Nostalgia Bits (NoBits) project aims at fostering social interaction between elderly and their family, through capturing their memories, personal, family and local history embodied by letters, newspapers, postcards, photos and other documents. A web-based platform is being developed where tangible artefacts of an elderly person’s life experience can be uploaded and become a significant resource for use by other generations, and a means for connecting the elderly users with members of own generation. Nostalgia Bits will thus be more than an “on-line community” service. It aims to be one of the first examples of what we call an “augmented community” service. Augmented communities combine the benefits of interest-bound communities (typically supported by on-line services) with the benefits of geographically-bound communities (which lead to rich, face-to-face interactions).