The original idea was to create an application to help share huge libraries of family documents, photo albums, or any kind of data within a family tree.

1. In order to narrow the scope, we reduced the load to only basic information, scannable documents or pictures (history objects), with documents being really anything a user might find pertinent about a particular leaf (node) on a family tree.
2. Another change was to include an actual family tree with family members as ‘leaves.’ Family members can vet history objects attached to their own nodes or nodes of post-humous relatives, or attach a history object to another leaf in a family tree.
3. In order to support manageability, we also decided to handle information overload by narrowing the interface to focus on parent leaves and their child leaves as a vertical relationship, and parent leaves’ siblings as a horizontal relationship. At any one time while using the interface, the focus will be on just parents and their children with options to navigate horizontally or vertically.

Task Example #1

Leslie wants to map out her family lineage. She discusses family ties with her grandfather. As her grandfather tells her about each person in the family, he tells interesting stories about them and tells her how they are related. Leslie makes family tree starting with her grandfather and grandmother. She wants to make notes on the tree about her grandfather and attach a picture of him. She does the same for her grandmother and all subsequent family members until she has a tree mapping all her aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and siblings.

Task Example #2

Maggie is a student who is taking History in high school, and the teacher assigns a project to make a family tree for each student’s family. Maggie, only knowledgeable about her parents’ lives, asks her parents about some of her grandparents’ interesting historical moments that they know of. Her mother tells her some of the obvious facts like their hometown, age, etc. After hearing the stories, Maggie becomes curious and strives for more interesting stories that her grandparents would like her to know about. As Maggie’s family lives far away from her grandparents, she does not often call her grandparents and she is afraid that it may be awkward to ask. After pondering for a while, she decides to only present the obvious facts on the family tree project.

Task Example #3

Mark’s family is going back to their home country for a family reunion since migrating to Canada years ago. As a part of the event, he wants to showcase their family history and ancestries. He compiles all his family records and photos, creates a family tree to show to the new generation and reminisce with family members. He plans to create copies of his collection so he could give copies to family members as a remembrance of the event. He also would like to be able to give copies to family members who are unable to join their reunion.