Myscéal: a deeper analysis of an interactive lifelog search engine

There is a growing number of lifelogging retrieval systems that have been introduced in several lifelogging workshops and sessions. Across all systems at the LSC, which is an annual international challenge about lifelogging retrieval, our Myscéal is currently considered as the state-of-the-art. In this paper, we describe the system in detail and show how it has been upgraded through time since firstly introduced in 2020. In addition, we analyse Myscéal performance not only in the three lifelog retrieval competitions it participated in but also with additional user experiments. The result shows that the fast searching time of Myscéal is the system’s most important feature that helps it get some significant advantages in competitions. On the other hand, the findings from user experiments indicate that Myscéal still needs some improvements for novice users who are unfamiliar with how to interact with the system. Moreover, the user study plays a vital role in the development of Myscéal as many updates of this system came from the feedback of the participating users. We also demonstrate the efficacy of Myscéal as a lifelog retrieval system to help the lifeloggers, who capture their daily life in images, recall memorable moments in their massive lifelog archives.