Living in a zoo: bringing user experiences with technology to life

Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction - NordiCHI '04, 2004

This paper reflects on a small user study conducted to learn about diversity of meanings, values and experiences people associate with different kinds of contemporary domestic technology. The general goal was to inform a research project's early stages about challenges when designing novel technology for the sensitive home environment. By adapting a cultural probes approach participants were given the self-documentation packages with the tasks concerning the various angles of domestic life. Through the tasks the idea was to get the participants more aware of their domestic surroundings and of sense-making related to use and display of domestic objects. One assignment was to think of the home as a zoo and of the domestic objects as animals by attaching animal stickers to represent objects. Analysis of the reasoning behind the animal choices brought out five categories:

IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, 2007

Domestic Objects are emerging as a source for embedding ubiquitous computer technologies. The current focus on single objects or a singular function neglects people's diverse functional use of domestic objects and their cultural significances at home. Based on ethnographic interviews, this paper reports how people utilize domestic objects in relation to activities and domestic spaces. The paper concludes with some design considerations for ubiquitous computer devices. 1 Understanding the Domestic Environment Ubiquitous computer technologies signify a transformation of the traditional form of computers into diverse objects that make up our everyday environment. The discussions on ubiquitous computer technologies initially focused on the work environment until the late 1990s when a call emerged emphasizing the need for exploring the home environment [1,2]. Together with the growing industry interests in so-called smart home technologies, the home environment has emerged as a new source of design opportunities for ubiquitous computer technologies. At the same time, as the discourse in human-computer interactions expanded beyond the domain of computer related disciplines, researchers in the field began to unleash particular considerations necessary for designing ubiquitous technologies for home. Three particular research approaches are worth mentioning in the area of designing ubiquitous computer technologies for home thus far developed: (1) understanding people at home as users, (2) designing to support routine activities, and (3) substituting existing functions of home objects with computational devices. Understanding People at Home as Users Initially from the work environment and later within the domestic environment, the use of technologies was initially studied from the perspective of technology Please use the following format when citing this chapter:

2010

Two studies are described that illustrate how one may gain an understanding of the needs of people with very different home circumstances to one's own. The first concerns families separated by long distances, the emotions that they experience and what it would mean to re-connect them with communication technologies. The second is a study of a nunnery and the ways that a technology can be designed for people with very particular values who are living communally. The contribution of the paper is to illustrate the value of thinking more broadly about the roles of technology in the home and to indicate some ways in which this may be done.

Cognition, Technology & …, 2003

This paper argues that the current involvement of end users in the design of technological artefacts is too superficial. It is common to involve people in requirements generation, but rarely in product inception or design. A study is reported involving five households in central Scotland, who were each visited on three occasions, using a new investigative framework. Illustrative examples are provided of the strengths and weaknesses of the methods used. Despite the latter, it is demonstrated that the general public can both generate and critique design ideas and that valuable contributions to understanding people's relationships with technologies can be expected both from children and from the elderly.

Homes are essential contexts in which to understand how technologies are used and experienced. At the same time they hold substantial challenges for conducting research, exploring novel designs, and building understanding. In this paper we review approaches to studying the home, including recent innovations and issues that should guide further methodological reflection. We draw on the expertise of a large number of researchers experienced in studying technology in the home, who have formed a community to map the space of methods in use and share their experiences of the key issues faced in practice. Themes include utilising new technology as a source of data as well as an object of study, creating representations of home life that support discussion and reflection, revealing details of important yet routine or mundane activities, and supporting participation to overcome the complex ethical and privacy concerns inherent in the study of the home.

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2007

Smart Home technology looks set to become an increasingly common feature of domestic life. However commercial desire for technical innovation rather than explicit user needs are often the driving force behind the development of Smart Home products and services. This study adapts the Cultural Probe approach developed by Gaver et al [2] to collect primarily visual data about what people value within their home environment. Whereas Cultural Probes are predominantly used to build empathy with users when designing product concepts, this approach attempted to provide similarly fun and engaging prompts for data collection when the design process and project context required more structured consideration of user needs. This paper presents the method developed, project findings and recommendations on how the method should be applied.

CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems on - CHI EA '13, 2013

Technology is becoming ever more integral to our home lives, and visions such as ubiquitous computing, smart technologies and the Internet of Things represent a further stage of this development. However studying interactions and experiences in the home, and drawing understanding from this to inform design, is a substantial challenge. A significant strand of research on technology in home life has developed in the CHI community and beyond, with a range of methods being created, adapted and used in combination. This workshop brings together a diverse group of researchers to develop a coherent understanding of this methodological space, and to identify connections and gaps, where further development of methods can occur to overcome issues specific to studying the home.

ACM CHI 2019, 2019

Research on product experience has a history in investigating the sensory and emotional qualities of interacting with objects. However, this notion has not been fully expanded to the design space of co-designing smart objects. In this paper, we report on findings from a series of co-design workshops where we used the toolkit Loaded Dice in conjunction with a card set that aimed to support participants in reflecting the sensory qualities of domestic smart objects. We synthesize and interpret findings from our study to help illustrate how the workshops supported co-designers in creatively ideating concepts for emotionally valuable smart objects that better connect personal inputs with the output of smart objects. Our work contributes a case example of how a co-design approach that emphasizes situated sensory exploration can be effective in enabling co-designers to ideate concepts of idiosyncratic smart objects that closely relate to the characteristics of their domestic living situations. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Participatory design.

… Journal of Human- …, 2007

In this paper, we describe field trials of three electronic furniture prototypes for the home. Each of the pieces was developed to explore different ways to encourage "ludic" engagement with the home, suggesting that computational technologies can meaningfully serve curiosity and exploration in domestic environments. The Drift slowly scrolling aerial photography controlled by the centre of gravity of the things on its surface. The History Tablecloth senses the locations of objects left upon it and creates a slowly growing "halo" around those left the longest. The Key measures the force with which people put things upon it and tilts a picture frame to indicate their mood. Each of the pieces was loaned to different households for periods ranging from one to three months. Because they were designed to encourage users to appropriate them through their activities and interpretations, a hypothesis-testing paradigm was inappropriate for evaluating the success of the designs. We focused instead on gathering rich, multi-layered accounts of peoples' experience through ethnographic observations and documentary videos. As we had expected, allowing people to try the designs in the field not only exposed issues relevant for assessment, but was integral to the designs themselves: Although we conceived of, designed and implemented the pieces, it was the users who endowed them with meaning.

Proceedings of the companion publication of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing - CSCW Companion '14, 2014

When developing new ICT systems and applications for domestic environments, rich qualitative approaches improve the understanding of the user's integral usage of technology in their daily routines and thereby inform design. This knowledge will often be reached through in-home studies, strong relationships with the users and their involvement in the design and evaluation process. However, whilst this kind of research offers valuable context insights and brings out unexpected findings, it also presents methodological, technical and organizational challenges for the study design and its underlying cooperation processes. In particular, due to heterogeneous users in households in terms of technology affinity, individual needs, age distribution, gender, social constellations, personal role assignment, project expectations, etc. it produces particular demands to collaborate with users in the design process and thereby exposes a range of practical challenges. The full-day workshop wishes to identify these practical challenges, discuss best practice and develop a roadmap for sustainable relationships for design with users.