Generating narratives from personal digital data: Triptychs

The need for users to make sense of their growing mass of personal digital data presents a challenge to Design and HCI researchers. There is a growing interest in using narrative techniques to support the interpretation and understanding of such data. In this early study we explore methods of selecting images from personal Instagram accounts in the form of a triptych (a sequence of three images) in order to create a sense of narrative. We present a brief description of the algorithms behind image selection, evaluate how effective they are in creating a sense of narrative, and discuss the wider implications of our work. Results show that semantic tagging, a dynamic programming algorithm, and a simple narrative structure produced triptychs which were significantly more story-like, with a significantly more coherent order, than a random selection, or a neutral sequence of images.