Human Factors in HCI Practical 2 – Mind Palace

Introduction

Hello and welcome back to my blog! This is my reflection on practical 2 for Human Factors in HCI. Here I will discuss the objective of this practical along with the process, challenges faced, and lessons learned.

Objective

The objective of this practical was to create a mind/memory palace of a place we know well and use this memory palace to aid us in remembering the items on a shopping list. This list was about 20 items long and we were supposed to remember what each item on the list was and be able to name the items in both normal and reverse order.

Process

I started by choosing a place that I know well which is my bedroom. I then planned a route around my room taking note of around 20 objects/landmarks and associated each object with an item on the list. The number of objects noted was the same as the amount of items on the list we were to remember. Below are the mentioned objects and items from the shopping list.

1. Door – Tomatoes
2. Posters on wall – Penne pasta
3. Desk – Honey
   • Chair – Brown rice
   • Consoles – Eggs
   • Monitors – Bran flakes
4. Pillar – Extra virgin olive oil
5. Sockets – Potatoes
6. Shelf – Garlic
   • One Piece figure – Carrots
   • Pop figures – Almonds
   • Pop figures 2 – Yogurt
   • Random – Red wine vinegar
   • Plugs – Salsa
   • Books – Plain flour
   • Games – White cabbage
   • Letters etc. – Butter
7. Drawer – Barbecue sauce
8. Window – Strawberry jam
9. Bed – Tomato ketchup

Once I had the route planned and items paired it was time for me to try and remember the list.

Challenges Faced

When trying to remember the list it was very difficult. We had to associate the items with 20 objects from our mind palace which effectively meant we had to memorise 40 different things. Remembering an object or item would push the other out of my memory. Initially I struggled to even remember a few of the items because of this before having to look down at the list again.

Lessons Learned

I found that I was able to remember more by making humorous associations between objects. An example of this is when my lecturer connected my Pokémon poster on my wall to penne pasta by suggesting that I imagine a Pokémon being stabbed by pasta. This helped me remember that item, but I doubt remembering this many funny connections would be viable due to complexity.

I personally think that using this way of remembering things is more trouble than it is worth. You are basically trying to remember double the amount of things you actually need to remember. A lot of time is also spent on creating your mind palace and then matching the items to the objects in your palace.

I prefer to learn things by writing them out or just looking at something and reading it in my mind until it becomes familiar to me but I do see the benefit of this method. This way of memorizing can be useful to those who learn visually and have brains programmed more for this type of learning