InteRecon: Towards Reconstructing Interactivity of Personal Memorable Items in Mixed Reality

TL;DR

InteRecon introduces a novel augmented reality system for reconstructing both the appearance and interactivity of personal items to enhance digital memory archiving.

Contribution

The paper presents the concept of Interactive Digital Items (IDI) and develops InteRecon, an AR prototype that enables reconstruction of physical appearance and interactivity of personal objects.

Findings

InteRecon is feasible for creating Interactive Digital Items.

IDI enriches personal memory archives with interactivity.

Users find IDI useful for preserving memories.

Abstract

Digital capturing of memorable personal items is a key way to archive personal memories. Although current digitization methods (e.g., photos, videos, 3D scanning) can replicate the physical appearance of an item, they often cannot preserve its real-world interactivity. We present Interactive Digital Item (IDI), a concept of reconstructing both the physical appearance and, more importantly, the interactivity of an item. We first conducted a formative study to understand users' expectations of IDI, identifying key physical interactivity features, including geometry, interfaces, and embedded content of items. Informed by these findings, we developed InteRecon, an AR prototype enabling personal reconstruction functions for IDI creation. An exploratory study was conducted to assess the feasibility of using InteRecon and explore the potential of IDI to enrich personal memory archives. Results show that InteRecon is feasible for IDI creation, and the concept of IDI brings new opportunities for augmenting personal memory archives.