The simplification of complex interactions for more inclusive social communication technologies (position paper)

New technologies, especially smart homes and mobile and ubiquitous technologies have the potential to foster improved quality of life in the older population. Some anticipated benefits are linked to specific applications in areas such as home automation, communication, shopping and health. However, some valuable potential benefits lie in building and sustaining relationships with remote extended family, particularly children and grandchildren, as well as with carers, neighbours and friends. Communication with geographically remote family can play an important role in helping to sustain autonomy, inclusion and independence. Reduction in isolation and improved participation have the potential to improve or sustain quality of life, but in addition they can lead to a reduction in vulnerability and sustained physical health. Another benefit can be to reassure adult children about the viability of their parent's independent living. Broadband "always-on" communications are potentially particularly useful tools in sustaining geographically remote relationships with extended family, as they can support many useful kinds of interaction, using modalities such as voice, video, pervasive annotation, selection, and remote concierging. Unfortunately, many possible new interactions are currently complex to manage, ruling them out on grounds of poor acceptability, accessibility and usability. However, our hypothesis is that a new interaction framework that combines social and technical components could be used to simplify many interactions of the kinds noted above sufficiently to the point where they would be rendered acceptable, accessible and usable. This paper outlines plans to test such a framework

Exploring past home improvement experiences to develop future energy saving technologies

This paper describes a participatory data collection tool designed for use within a multi-disciplinary energy research project. The tool was designed to encourage participants to narrate the story of their past home improvement experiences. The User Centred Designers within the team then used these stories to extract user requirements for use by engineering specialists within the project tea

Smart homes and extended families

Mobile and Ubiquitous technologies have the potential to strengthen and enrich geographically dispersed multigenerational family relationships and networks in ways that go well beyond existing telecommunications technologies. Smart home technologies could be developed specifically to facilitate a rich range of interactions between geographically dispersed members of multi-generational and extended families by focusing on ways in which networks of two or more smart homes could promote such interactions. The aim is find ways to strengthen geographically remote multi-generational family relationships and reduce the isolation of older family members. We outline the new interaction principles that can be used to simplify such interactions, and the biographical and ethnographic techniques needed to identify the factors likely to affect the acceptability and perceived value of such new facilities within family networks

Technology probes: experiences with home energy feedback

We discuss our experience in applying a Technology Probe approach to the study of new concepts and technologies at home. We discuss benefits and challenges of using this methodology based on an experiment which aimed to bring solar panel energy feedback into everyday life

State of the art/science: Visual methods and information behavior research

This panel reports on methodological innovation now underway as information behavior scholars begin to experiment with visual methods. The session launches with a succinct introduction to visual methods by Jenna Hartel and then showcases three exemplar visual research designs. First, Dianne Sonnenwald presents the "information horizon interview" (1999, 2005), the singular visual method native to the information behavior community. Second, Anna Lundh (2010) describes her techniques for capturing and analyzing primary school children's information activities utilizing video recordings. Third, Nancy Fried Foster (Foster & Gibbons, 2007) reports how students, staff and faculty members produce maps, drawings, and photographs as a means of contributing their specialist knowledge to the design of library technologies and spaces at the University of Rochester. Altogether, the panel will present a collage of innovative visual research designs and engage the associated epistemological, theoretical, methodological, and empirical issues. All speakers will have 15 minutes and be timed to allow a minimum of 30 minutes for audience questions, comments, and discussion. Upon the conclusion attendees will have gained: knowledge of the state of the art/science of visual methods in information behavior research; an appreciation for the richness the approach brings to the specialty; and a platform to take new visual research designs forward

Four factors of change: Adaptations of everyday design

This paper is a follow up study of a 2005-2006 study of everyday design. This follow-up study is an opportunity to gain insights into the social evolution of everyday design systems in the home. We report on changes to five systems and discuss how these changes occurred over the last four to five years. We identify four factors related to the changes 1) shared intent 2) mutual intelligibility, 3) materiality-substitutability, and 4) fit