Equipment management trial : TAHI summary

The Equipment Management (EM) trial was one of the practical initiatives conceived and implemented by members of The Application Home Initiative (TAHI) with strong support from the DTI, to demonstrate the feasibility of interoperability between white and brown goods, and other domestic equipment. The trial ran from October 2002 to June 2005, over which period it achieved its core objectives through the deployment in early 2005 of an integrated system in trials in 15 occupied homes. Prior to roll out into the field, the work was underpinned by soak testing, validation, laboratory experiments, case studies, user questionnaires, simulations and other research, conducted in a single demonstration home in Loughborough, as well as in Universities in the East Midlands and Scotland. The trial was conducted against a backdrop of continual commercial change. Despite this difficult operating environment, the trial met its objectives, although not entirely as envisaged initially – a tribute to the determination of the trial’s membership, the strength of its formal governance and management processes, and especially, the financial support of the dti. The equipment on trial featured a central heating/hot water boiler, washing machine, security system, gas alarm and utility meters, all connected to a home gateway, integrated functionally and presented to the users via a single interface. The trial met its principal objective to show that by connecting appliances to each other and to a support system, benefits in remote condition monitoring, maintenance, appliance & home controls optimisation and convenience to the customer & service supplier could be provided. The EM trial identified exciting opportunities for the UK’s domestic white and brown goods manufacturing sector. Despite the relative immaturity of some of the enabling technologies people seem interested in the use of smart home devices to improve their quality of life or just generally make things easier at home in their busy schedules. Whilst the enabling technology behind future smart homes is being developed at a rapid pace, it is the intelligent application and integration of this technology that will make the difference to the home consumer. Just because the technology provider can make a ‘useful’ device it does not necessarily mean that the consumer actually wants to buy the ‘new’ invention. The EM trial has successfully shown where certain technology can be deployed successfully and also identified areas where further work is required

Pop-up Home: Evidencing an urban nomad’s distributed domestic intimacy beyond a sedentary home

“A home is not a house” can be read as a design hypothesis for an alternative urban domesticity and an attempt to explore a more distributed mode of existence than what a fixed house might have presumably confined for its users. In this design hypothesis, the sedentary narrative for the design of a fixed house was questioned, mostly on its physical forms and as well, on its social implications. As a design research, Pop-up Home further explores this design hypothesis in a refreshed context of a distributed home and on a focused subject of domestic intimacy. For Pop-up Home, domestic intimacy can be defined as a spatial “sense of home” which can be found extending beyond a sedentary home. Pop-up Home takes on a combination of an auto-ethnographic and a participatory action research. Through the perspective of an auto-ethnographic urban nomad, the design research collects a set of “lived-experience” ranging from being a compact home renter, to a “rug sojourner”, then to a “rickshaw-bed rider”, and to a “digital nomad” with a lifestyle of “living as service” via distributed accommodation platforms such as Airbnb and Couchsurfing, etc. Through this perspective of the urban nomad, the MPhil thesis explores spatial evidence for alternative forms of urban domesticity which are not based upon a fixed house, but rather which take a more distributed form. Through the same perspective, the thesis also explores an alternative design narrative of urban domesticity in which a new social form of domestic life in a more distributed mode is emerging. The collected examples of urban nomads and their distributed domestic intimacy have been captured through the auto-ethnographic work and experiential encounters in Hong Kong, Pune India, and London. Documenting and curating the above set of examples, and based on the theoretical framework of “spatial agency”, the design research constructs both an empathetic and an intellectual framework for understanding the evidenced changes in urban domesticity, in relation to the increasingly precarious conditions of life in modern economies. The MPhil thesis, as a phase of the design research overall, aims to focus on the conflicts between the institution of the sedentary home and the nomadic nature of a “creative user”; and to evoke a positive ideology where a fixed house could be planned, transformed, maintained, and/or altered creatively by these users. This framework for a distributed home might lead to a specific method of “participatory design” to think, practice, and finance future urban domesticity in a “small, local, open and connected” design scenario of a world city, and contribute to a more genuine human-centred design method and design thinking for future urban domesticity

Protect My Future: The Links Between Child Protection and Equity

The lack of care and protection facing children is a global crisis with billions of children experiencing abuse, neglect or exploitation, and many millions growing up outside of families, on the streets or in harmful institutional care. This lack of adequate care and protection is commonly the result of inequalities.Gender norms make girls especially vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation, early marriage and domestic work, and boys to hazardous child labour and detention. Children with disabilities, from ethnic minorities or living with or affected by HIV are more likely than their peers to suffer from a loss of care and protection, and income inequalities increase exposure to child labour and institutionalisation.Children without adequate care and protection are commonly stigmatised, and have inequitable access to education, health, social protection and justice. Combined with the long lasting impacts of neglect, abuse and institutionalisation, this lack of access to basic services severely diminishes life chances, creating a spiral of disadvantage.In order to break this spiral, a three-pronged strategy is required which sees: reductions in social and economic inequalities that have a major impact on children's care and protection; increased investments in strong and equitable national child protection systems and efforts to address the stigma and discrimination faced by children without adequate care and protection

Smart homes, control and energy management:How do smart home technologies influence control over energy use and domestic life?

By introducing new ways of automatically and remotely controlling domestic environments smart technologies have the potential to significantly improve domestic energy management. It is argued that they will simplify users’ lives by allowing them to delegate aspects of decision-making and control - relating to energy management, security, leisure and entertainment etc. - to automated smart home systems. Whilst such technologically-optimistic visions are seductive to many, less research attention has so far been paid to how users interact with and make use of the advanced control functionality that smart homes provide within already complex everyday lives. What literature there is on domestic technology use and control, shows that control is a complex and contested concept. Far from merely controlling appliances, householders are also concerned about a wide range of broader understandings of control relating, for example, to control over security, independence, hectic schedules and even over other household members such as through parenting or care relationships. This paper draws on new quantitative and qualitative data from 4 homes involved in a smart home field trial that have been equipped with smart home systems that provide advanced control functionality over appliances and space heating. Quantitative data examines how householders have used the systems both to try and improve their energy efficiency but also for purposes such as enhanced security or scheduling appliances to align with lifestyles. Qualitative data (from in-depth interviews) explores how smart technologies have impacted upon, and were impacted by, broader understandings of control within the home. The paper concludes by proposing an analytical framework for future research on control in the smart home

Simtech 08 poster submission: digital upheavals: ethnographic studies on digital-DIY activity

This poster describes current work-in-progress on a digital-DIY research project, exploring how people experiencing life-change configure and re-configure their domestic entertainment, information and communication technologies. The project draws upon a number of theoretical concepts from human-computer interaction, the social construction of technology, material culture and design studies to understand the digital-DIY phenomenon and is methodologically rooted in the ethnographic tradition. This poster describes early pilot-study work utilizing Blythe et al’s (2002) ‘Technology Biographies’ method applied to (amongst other pilot studies) the author’s own autoethnographic study of moving home and concludes with a summary of themes and concepts emerging from this early data. The poster presents proposals for future empirical studies of people experiencing life-change

Presenting the networked home: a content analysis of promotion material of Ambient Intelligence applications

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) for the home uses information and communication technologies to make users’ everyday life more comfortable. AmI is still in its developmental phase and is headed towards the first stages of diffusion. \ud Characteristics of AmI design can be observed, among others, in the promotion material of initial producers. A literature study revealed that AmI originally envisioned a central role for the user, convenience that AmI offers them and that attention should be paid to critical policy issues such as privacy and a potential loss of freedom. A content analysis of current promotion material of several high-tech companies revealed that these original ideas are not all reflected in the material. Attributes which were used most in the promotion material were ‘connectedness’, ‘control’, ‘easiness’ and ‘personalization’. An analysis of the pictures in the promotion material showed that almost half of the pictures contained no humans but appliances. These results only partly correspond to the original vision on AmI, since the emphasis is now on technology. The results represent a serious problem, since both users, as well as critical policy issues are underexposed in the current promotion material

Smart homes and their users:a systematic analysis and key challenges

Published research on smart homes and their users is growing exponentially, yet a clear understanding of who these users are and how they might use smart home technologies is missing from a field being overwhelmingly pushed by technology developers. Through a systematic analysis of peer-reviewed literature on smart homes and their users, this paper takes stock of the dominant research themes and the linkages and disconnects between them. Key findings within each of nine themes are analysed, grouped into three: (1) views of the smart home-functional, instrumental, socio-technical; (2) users and the use of the smart home-prospective users, interactions and decisions, using technologies in the home; and (3) challenges for realising the smart home-hardware and software, design, domestication. These themes are integrated into an organising framework for future research that identifies the presence or absence of cross-cutting relationships between different understandings of smart homes and their users. The usefulness of the organising framework is illustrated in relation to two major concerns-privacy and control-that have been narrowly interpreted to date, precluding deeper insights and potential solutions. Future research on smart homes and their users can benefit by exploring and developing cross-cutting relationships between the research themes identified

We're in it for the Long Haul: Alternatives to Incarceration for Youth in Conflict with the Law

This paper specifically addresses five programs in Chicago that provide alternatives to incarceration for young people charged with or convicted of crimes. Included in this exploration are issues of cost, effectiveness, capacity, and the needs of youth and organizations moving forward