Keepsake
Preserve your memeories in ObjectsCIID Tangible User Interface, 2025
Mentors: Massimo Banzi, Pierluigi Dalla Rosa
Duration: 2 weeks
Team: Edha, Hun, Gayatri
Keepsake is an exploration of memory as a living, tangible experience. Rather than keeping memories locked away in digital archives or paper journals, Keepsake lets objects like your coffee mug, a childhood toy or a family heirloom become portals into the past.
How does it work?
The core interaction is simple: place an object on the Keepsake surface, and it responds. A built-in camera captures the object, and a locally hosted LLaVA model processes the image to extract its key characteristics. If the object already has a memory, it plays automatically; if not, the user is invited to record a new one.
Light signalling to build cognitive relationship with user’s exisitng mental models
Through prototyping we quickly realised that LED animations were crucial in helping a user understand how to use and interact with the memory machine. The machine was broken up into 4 main states: Object detection + analysing, memory retrival, memory playback, and recording.
Color, animation, and sound were used to highlight the seperate states of the objects’ inherent memeory and the steps that the user could perform with the machine at a given time. We decided to halo the object with the light instead of creating a seperate loading animation, as it increased the immersion during the experience and engaged the users while the local LLM loaded.
The development was at two levels, one was the look feel and industrial aspects of the product, and the second was the user experience of using this technology.
Although the first week was all about diverging into the form and tangible aspects of the designs, making physical sketches, later, a lot of the physical characteristics of the product were guided by the need for mechanics and electronics needing specific casing, like the camera had to on the top to look down at the product. These constraints gave the product it’s unique look.
Recording interactions initially relied on standard start-and-stop buttons, but users often forgot to stop, creating frustration. Switching to a press-and-hold system with a physical microphone pop-up helped people remain engaged and deliberate in their storytelling. Processing time was another challenge—the LLaVA analysis could take up to 10 seconds, and users could get impatient. Introducing LED animations and gentle sound cues made this wait feel intentional, keeping the user’s attention.
For me the biggest learning from this project was that constraints are absolutely essential in a design project, they help you keep focused, and input your energy into doing rather than thinking. The biggest constrainst here was that we could not have a screen, which gave the product it’s unique personality.
Looking forward, Keepsake could expand into shared and community contexts, letting multiple users layer narratives onto the same artifact, or integrate subtle haptic cues to enhance the intimacy of memory playback. The project is a step toward rethinking memory not as static content but as a tactile, evolving dialogue with the things we cherish.