Topology of Memory
Building an interactive map to archive memories in NYC.
NYU Interactive Media Arts Senior Capstone ‘24
Timeline
February - May 2024
Role
Solo project; design & front-end web dev
Technologies
HTML/CSS, Javascript, Google Maps API, ThreeJS
OVERVIEW
Topology of Memory is an interactive map built for sharing personal memories tied to places in New York City. Anyone can contribute a memory, explore the stories others have left behind, and physically visit the stories’ locations in person.
CONTEXT
Throughout my time at NYU, I've become more and more fascinated by cities and the relationships we form with them.
Having grown up in the suburbs of California, I was completely out of my depth when I moved to NYC for my freshman year.
It's only after four years of living here that I'm able to reflect on how much New York now feels like home. I’m irrationally fond of even the most mundane street corners, thanks to them having been the backdrop for so many moments in my life. When I walk through the city now, I can't help but recall certain events that happened in the buildings and streets I pass.
The bench in Washington Square Park where I sat with my sister and our suitcases after landing from California my freshman year [Aug 2020]
The restaurant on St. Marks where I first
got dinner with my best friend [April 2022]
The cafe by my old apartment in Chinatown
where I became friends with the baristas
and helped redraw their menu [Dec 2022]
This got me thinking...
In a city of 8 million people, every block is layered with stories that would otherwise go untold. I wanted to build a place to record them.
If I carry all of these invisible histories around with me, what about everyone else?
In a city of 8 million people, every block is layered with stories that would otherwise go untold. I wanted to build a place to record them.
RESEARCH
A few of my research sources and inspirations
As I started to form the basis of my project, I found studies confirming my observation that memories are deeply tied to place, meaning that specific locations can act as retrieval cues for forgotten moments. And these memories, as psychologist Oliva Espín writes, are central to identity itself:
“Memory provides the only sense of continuity. Places and people change; the only way of knowing who you are — that you are — is to remember."
However, as I sought out more research, I kept coming across writings from urbanists and media scholars who pointed out a tension I recognized: technology, with its power to connect people across unbounded distances online, has inadvertently led to the loss of a sense of place and belonging in the physical realm — with cities embodying the extreme end of this phenomenon.
GOALS
From my research, I landed on two goals I hoped to accomplish with my project.
1. TIE MEMORIES TO PLACE
Give people a way to concretely anchor memories to the city so they can be revisited and kept alive.
Give people a way to concretely anchor memories to the city so they can be revisited and kept alive.
2. PRIORITIZE THE PHYSICAL WORLD
Explore the use of technology as a non-distracting presence to enrich the experience of exploring a city in person.
Explore the use of technology as a non-distracting presence to enrich the experience of exploring a city in person.
How can I design a platform that helps New Yorkers explore and share their personal histories attached to the urban environment?
INITIAL CONCEPT & SKETCHES
My initial concept was a map where anyone could anonymously plot a memory as a short text-based note at any location in the city. I wanted the project to be unlike conventional social media platforms and I wanted users to feel comfortable sharing personal stories, so I decided against individual user accounts.
As an preliminary prototype for user feedback, I sketched out the main screens. I imagined two different user flows: either accessing a memory on the map remotely, or accessing it once physically at a point on the map.
My initial sketches
Early feedback on these sketches pushed me away from a conventional map interface — people felt it was too impersonal and didn't capture what it actually felt like to be somewhere in the city. This pushed me towards the design direction the project eventually took.
KEY DESIGN DECISIONS
1. IN-PERSON MODE
From the beginning, I struggled with the question: how much should users be able to experience remotely? Other collaborative mapping platforms I researched didn’t really make this distinction, so everything was accessible from anywhere.
While viewing memories from home would make the project more accessible, a core aspect of the project would be lost if people never saw them in the actual place they occurred. I decided to offer both modes but reserve the interaction of “shedding light” on a memory for when you were physically present (within 100 meters).
I envisioned people using the map to take a walk through the memories in their neighborhood, or pulling it up when they were already out somewhere to see what had happened in that space.
Because the aspect of physical exploration within the city was so important to me, I decided to offer an interactive “in-person mode.”
From the beginning, I struggled with the question: how much should users be able to experience remotely? Other collaborative mapping platforms I researched didn’t really make this distinction, so everything was accessible from anywhere.
While viewing memories from home would make the project more accessible, a core aspect of the project would be lost if people never saw them in the actual place they occurred. I decided to offer both modes but reserve the interaction of “shedding light” on a memory for when you were physically present (within 100 meters).
I envisioned people using the map to take a walk through the memories in their neighborhood, or pulling it up when they were already out somewhere to see what had happened in that space.
2. VISUAL DESIGN
I chose soft colors to set a calm mood, and kept the UI minimal so it wouldn't compete with the stories people were reading. I stripped away almost all the default map text — business labels, street names, city labels — and kept only neighborhood names, so the focus stayed on the memories themselves. I also replaced the location marker with a person icon, rather than the default blue dot. The cloud-shaped border framing the map ties into the symbolism of shedding light on memories, and the way memories are typically visualized as thought bubbles.
For the map itself, I used Google's 3D vector map to render the actual topography and building models of the city, as I felt it placed you in the environment in a way a flat map couldn't.
I wanted the map to look visually distinctive, and convey the feeling of actually walking around the city.
I chose soft colors to set a calm mood, and kept the UI minimal so it wouldn't compete with the stories people were reading. I stripped away almost all the default map text — business labels, street names, city labels — and kept only neighborhood names, so the focus stayed on the memories themselves. I also replaced the location marker with a person icon, rather than the default blue dot. The cloud-shaped border framing the map ties into the symbolism of shedding light on memories, and the way memories are typically visualized as thought bubbles.
For the map itself, I used Google's 3D vector map to render the actual topography and building models of the city, as I felt it placed you in the environment in a way a flat map couldn't.
3. MEMORIES AS FLOWERS
I thought that personifying the memories as living entities would make it easier for people to emotionally connect to them, rather than feeling like they were reading entries in a database. I chose daffodils specifically because they're the official flower of NYC, and I’ve strongly associated them with the city ever since seeing them bloom on every sidewalk my freshman year spring.
Once I had landed on flowers, the interaction design followed from the same metaphor. Out of the many interactions I considered, I landed on the idea of "shedding light" on a flower. I liked how simple it was, and I liked how giving a flower sunlight paralleled the idea of bringing a memory back into the light. Each time someone sheds light on a flower, it grows — so the size of each flower reflects how many people have visited it.
I was inspired to represent memories as flowers, to parallel the way we leave memories behind in places and need to continually revisit them to keep them alive.
I thought that personifying the memories as living entities would make it easier for people to emotionally connect to them, rather than feeling like they were reading entries in a database. I chose daffodils specifically because they're the official flower of NYC, and I’ve strongly associated them with the city ever since seeing them bloom on every sidewalk my freshman year spring.
Once I had landed on flowers, the interaction design followed from the same metaphor. Out of the many interactions I considered, I landed on the idea of "shedding light" on a flower. I liked how simple it was, and I liked how giving a flower sunlight paralleled the idea of bringing a memory back into the light. Each time someone sheds light on a flower, it grows — so the size of each flower reflects how many people have visited it.
DEVELOPMENT
A lovely GIF of every step I went through, not including the many errors I had to debug :)
USER TESTING
To test the core experience of collecting memories before the map was fully built, I approached 10 strangers in Washington Square Park and asked them if there were any places in the city where a specific memory immediately came to mind whenever they passed by.
Hearing from New Yorkers who could recall memories from decades ago in vivid detail motivated me to add a time field to the memory entry form, in order to convey the overarching history of a place.
Later, I had about 20 friends and classmates test the map and submit their own stories. Watching people interact with it in real time helped me pinpoint where they hesitated and what confused them.
I noticed some people were confused by the “description of location” field, as it is a separate step from the location search/selecting the coordinates. As a result, I tweaked the text prompts within the form, changed the form mechanics, and gave examples of what should go in each field to make it clearer.
To test the core experience of collecting memories before the map was fully built, I approached 10 strangers in Washington Square Park and asked them if there were any places in the city where a specific memory immediately came to mind whenever they passed by.
Hearing from New Yorkers who could recall memories from decades ago in vivid detail motivated me to add a time field to the memory entry form, in order to convey the overarching history of a place.
My friends testing out the project!
Later, I had about 20 friends and classmates test the map and submit their own stories. Watching people interact with it in real time helped me pinpoint where they hesitated and what confused them.
I noticed some people were confused by the “description of location” field, as it is a separate step from the location search/selecting the coordinates. As a result, I tweaked the text prompts within the form, changed the form mechanics, and gave examples of what should go in each field to make it clearer.
New-and-improved add memory form
Time field + example placeholder text
Form interaction demo
Contextual feedback as the user searches, hovers, or clicks around the map
NEXT STEPS
While I’m really excited to put my website out into the world, I see this as just the first iteration, as there are still a lot of ways I hope to build on this project.
MODERATION
One practical consideration I’m still working on is how to handle abusive or inappropriate submissions. For now, I'm able to manually moderate the map by removing any entries in the database that violate the spirit of the project. In the future, I'd like to build in a review step so that submissions don't appear on the map until they've been checked.
REFLECTION
My capstone presentation (video)
NYU IMA/ITP Spring Show!
Presenting the project at my program's end-of-year showcase, I got to spend a lot of time connecting with people over it and hearing what it brought up for them. People logged first dates and breakups, memorable nights out, serendipitous encounters with strangers, favorite neighborhood spots that had since closed.
Many people found that reading someone else's memory of a place made them want to visit it, or surfaced a memory of their own they hadn't thought about in years. One person admitted he was often distracted when walking through the city and never really thought about the deeper significance of spaces around him, and appreciated how my project encouraged him to slow down and reflect. A few people even imagined using my platform as a sort of alternative map, and navigating the city solely through reading others’ stories as if hearing about them from a friend.
When I first started this project, it was really just my way of working through a lot of ideas I’d been contemplating recently — my own sense of belonging in New York, the ways spaces in the city have shaped me over the past four years, and the pull I felt to archive all of these memories that were so precious to me. Now that I’ve gotten the chance to share this project, I feel even more connected to the city through hearing everyone else’s stories and cultivating a place where those memories can continue to be told.
If you’re still interested in more...