Memory Printer: Exploring Everyday Reminiscing by Combining Slow Design with Generative AI-based Image Creation

TL;DR

This paper introduces Memory Printer, a tangible AI-based image creation tool that enhances user agency and memory recall through slow, embodied interaction, addressing limitations of existing generative AI interfaces.

Contribution

It presents a novel tangible design combining slow interaction with generative AI to improve agency and legibility in memory reconstruction tasks.

Findings

Enhanced memory evocation and user control

Opportunities for creative exploration

Identified risks like false memories and bias

Abstract

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) offers new opportunities for reconstructing these unrecorded memory scenes, yet existing web-based tools undermine users' sense of agency through disengaging and unpredictable interactions. In this work, we advance three design arguments about how slow, tangible interaction can reshape human-AI relationships by making temporality, embodied agency, and generative processes experientially legible. We instantiate these arguments by presenting Memory Printer, a tangible design that combines silk-screen printing metaphors with text-to-image generation. The design features layered reconstruction that decomposes image generation into incremental steps, a physical wooden scraper enabling embodied control over image revelation, and built-in printing that produces tangible photos. We examine these arguments through a comparative study with 24 participants, exploring how participants engage with, interpret, and respond to this interaction stance. The study surfaces both opportunities -- such as vivid memory evocation, heightened sense of control, and creative exploration -- and critical tensions, including risks of false memory formation, algorithmic bias, and data privacy. Together, these findings articulate important boundaries for deploying generative AI in emotionally sensitive contexts.