Exploring the Reflective Potentialities of Personal Data with Different Temporal Modalities: A Field Study of Olo Radio

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We describe a long-term field study of Olo Radio, a music player that lets people re-experience digital music they have listened to previously. Olo Radio offers different ‘timeframe modes’ for organizing one’s personal listening history data, and for exploring possible connections among songs and across time. We deployed 5 Olo Radios in 5 households for 8 months to understand participants’ experiences over time. Our goals are to: (i) investigate the reflective potentialities of personal data for memory- oriented music listening and (ii) empirically explore conceptual propositions related to slow technology. Findings revealed Olo Radio became highly integrated in participants lives and triggered reflection on past life experiences. They also showed that Olo Radio was perceived to subtly change over time, and open up different ways of experiencing time. Findings are interpreted to present opportunities for future HCI research and practice.