HOME COMPUTING“Engineering Ethnography in the Home”

“You Can Go Home Again: Revisiting a Study of Domestic Computing”

“At Home with Surface Computing?”

CHI 96• “Engineering Ethnography in the Home”• Short paper• Theme is “Common Ground”

• “In the past, we have built bridges, we have showcased and celebrated interdependence, and we have worked on the creation of a mosaic of creativity. It is time now to focus on defining our common ground.

• The more our field matures, the more we need to understand its common ground. We need to understand that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Technological progress alone can not determine the maturity of the field.”

• http://www.sigchi.org/chi96/CommonGround.html

Who are the authors?• Michael Mateas, Tony Salvador, Jean Scholtz, Doug

Sorensen • Researchers at Intel

AI, art, design Disruptive innovation practice, dev & new market creation with an ethnographic perspective

Human-robot interaction, intelligent analysis

Engineering Ethnography in the Home

• Conducted an ethnographic study of the home in order to “inform the design and development of domestic computing systems”

• What is an ethnographic study?

Engineering Ethnography in the Home

• The University of Cambridge defines it as a study that “aims to produce a detailed description of how a particular social group operates, based on observation of, and often participation in, the group. This may be supplemented by interviews and gathering of documents and artefacts.”

• https://camtools.cam.ac.uk/wiki/site/e30faf26-bc0c-4533-acbc-cff4f9234e1b/ethnographic%20and%20field%20study.html

Engineering Ethnography in the Home

• Ate dinner with the family and gathered data informally, then toured the family’s home

• Interviewed family members about a “typical day in the home”

• Used a felt board to model they layout of the home and location of family members, their typical activities in the home, and the technology used in the home

Engineering Ethnography in the Home

• Use of space, time, and social communication are the most import aspects of this model of daily home life

• Implicit Model: computer is designed to be used in one place, by one person, for long periods of time, and is used mostly for communicating with strangers

• Findings about daily home life do not match this model• Found together time to be highly valued• Conclude that multiple, small, connected computers that

several people can use in the same space are more appropriate for home use

Engineering Ethnography in the Home

• Thinking about the way we use computers at home today, did the paper’s conclusion turn out to be correct?

Engineering Ethnography in the Home

• In 2012, is there anything missing from this paper’s model of daily home life?

The State of Home Computing in 1996

The State of Home Computing in 1996

The State of Home Computing in 1996

The State of Home Computing in 1996

The State of Home Computing in 1996

• What was especially novel about home computing in 1996?

Allison Woodruff

• “Allison is passionate about using technology for social good, and she is an active advocate for research on sustainability.”

• Research Scientist at Intel Labs Berkeley• Research interests include: mobile environmental sensing for

community action, sustainability and green computing, reflective and restorative experiences, religion and home automation, micro-mobility

• http://www.allisonwoodruff.com/

Allison Woodruff

Allison Woodruff

Allison Woodruff

You Can Go Home Again: Revisiting a Study of Domestic Computing• Research in the home presents unique challenges:

privacy, need for sensitivity, diversity of participants and complexity of their relationships with each other, difficulty of reporting daily life activities, limited access to the home

• Views the paper as a “microcosm of ethnographic investigation for design”

• Highlights use of a qualitative rather than quantitative method

• “Much care was taken to investigate the context rather than simply focusing on the use of technology”

You Can Go Home Again: Revisiting a Study of Domestic Computing• This method is still useful today, version of it still used at

Intel and other organizations, along with felt board/ map• Initially concerned that felt map would be inappropriate for

the population she was studying• Addressed this issue through proper framing and by

helping participants move pieces around on the map• More specificity than just Q&A • “Engineering Ethnography in the Home” reminds us of the

value of studying broader context, home life in HCI and the use of creative prompting materials

You Can Go Home Again: Revisiting a Study of Domestic Computing• What do we gain by conducting research in the home that is missing from research done in the lab? Pros and cons?

You Can Go Home Again: Revisiting a Study of Domestic Computing• Has anyone here conducted this type of ethnographic study in the course of their research?

David S. Kirk

• “I study the complex, messy and intriguing interactions between people, digital technologies and the environments in which they're used, with a view to designing new kinds of interactive computational technologies and services.”

• Senior Lecturer in Experience-Centered Design, CS, at Newcastle University• Research interests include: user experience and interaction design, video-

mediated communication, remote collaboration, tangible and surface computing, physical-digital hybridity, personal archiving / digital storage and the future of memorialization

• http://www.ds-kirk.com/

David S. Kirk

At Home with Surface Computing?• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TkIVUqGjkc• DIY surface computer at Maker Faire, 2010

At Home with Surface Computing?• Goal is to “investigate the potential for surface computing

in the home”• Built a multi-touch, interactive tabletop- rich in interactions

(but not features), physics for virtual objects, bespoke • Attempting to move away from the desktop interaction

metaphor • Previous research on surface computing has focused on

collaboration• “If we wish to have such technologies widely adopted in

the real world, we need to better understand how people will interact with them as part of their everyday lives”

At Home with Surface Computing?• Investigated how to design physical behaviors for virtual

objects which may or may not correspond to how we manipulate real objects

• Emphasis on few constraints, little instruction- participants discover how to manipulate photos through play and experimentation

• Found that in the digital world “more hands or fingers does not necessarily equate to more control”

At Home with Surface Computing?• Users felt that the tabletop was different from the standard

desktop interface because they were more directly interacting with their photos, technology was hidden

• Felt that you didn’t necessarily need computer skills to use the device- you only need your hands

• Participants increasingly did not want to use the table collaboratively

• Challenged the idea that Natural User Interaction = touch

At Home with Surface Computing?

• The authors of “At Home with Surface Computing?” wanted to move beyond the desktop metaphor, but is the physical desktop structure holding this technology back?

At Home with Surface Computing?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac0E6deG4AU• Jeff Han at TED, 2006

At Home with Surface Computing?

• What do you think home computing research and technology development will look like in the future?

Thank you• hosmer1@umbc.edu