Informal Archiving Systems of Digital Videos - A proposal for design principles.

Abstract

This thesis deals with the challenges of archiving and organizing digital media, in particular video, as part of everyday life. Through mapping of related research work, products and phenomena, the current paradigms of development in media archiving and organizing are identified. By means of a documented, exploratory field study into the homes and physical video collections of six individuals, it is observed that people organize and archive their physical media archive primarily through placing videos in environments and locations with specific functions and secondly, through reorganizing the media when they use it. These observations are refined and translated by producing six video prototypes which present speculative situations of archiving and organizing videos amidst daily media usage. As an outcome of the knowledge and understanding created in this design research project, the practice of informal archiving is identified. The differences between the informal and formal, professional way of archiving are presented. A set of design principles for developing systems that take into account the needs, context and practices of informal archiving, are proposed. A possible application of using the principles is illustrated in the form of a scenario.