Bjorn Nansen

#Funeral and Instagram: death, social media, and platform vernacular

This paper presents findings from a study of Instagram use and funerary practices that analysed photographs shared on public profiles tagged with ‘#funeral’. We found that the majority of images uploaded with the hashtag #funeral often communicated a persons emotional circumstances and affective context, and allowed them to reposition their funeral experience amongst wider networks of acquaintances, friends, and family. We argue that photo-sharing through Instagram echoes broader shifts in commemorative and memorialization practices, moving away from formal and institutionalized rituals to informal and personalized, vernacular practices. Finally, we consider how Instagrams ‘platform vernacular’ unfolds in relation to traditions and contexts of death, mourning, and memorialization. This research contributes to a broader understanding of how platform vernaculars are shaped through the logics of architecture and use. This research also directly contributes to the understanding of death and digital media by examining how social media is being mobilized in relation to death, the differences that different media platforms make, and the ways social media are increasingly entwined with the places, events, and rituals of mourning.

Time, Space and Technology in the Working-Home: An Unsettled Nexus

The research reported here draws upon four homes in Melbourne, Australia, where variable practices and strategies in the use of information and communication technologies are adopted in negotiating the temporal and spatial dynamics of the working-home. Informed by theories from Science and Technology Studies, we argue that these strategies arise in concernful relation with others — both human and non-human — that enable and constrain the possibilities for action.

Paradigms of games research in HCI: a review of 10 years of research at CHI

In this paper we argue that games and play research in the field of Human-Computer Interaction can usefully be understood as existing within 4 distinct research paradigms. We provide our rationale for developing these paradigms and discuss their significance in the context of the inaugural CHI Play conference.

Domestic orchestration Rhythms in the mediated home

The steady proliferation of media and connectivity reconstitutes domestic rhythms in ways that make them emergent, relational, negotiated, and multiple. In an attempt to capture some of the entangled dynamics characteristic of contemporary domestic chronometrics (time-measured), chronaesthetics (time-felt) and chronomanagement (time-ordered), we use the terms ‘reticular rhythms’ and ‘technologies of reticulation’. In our analysis of interviews with five families over three years we identify four interrelated forms of reticular rhythms that together constitute the rhythms of contemporary domestic life. These four are: a polyphonic drone, a polychronic dissonance, an asynchronous consonance, and an orchestrated performance. Each of these forms of rhythm are described and illustrated.

Invisible connections: investigating older people's emotions and social relations around objects

The advent of the Internet of Things creates an interest in how people might interrelate through and with networks of internet enabled objects. With an emphasis on fostering social connection and physical activity among older people, this preliminary study investigated objects that people over the age of 65 years viewed as significant to them. We conducted contextual interviews in peoples homes about their significant objects in order to understand the role of the objects in their lives, the extent to which they fostered emotional and social connections and physical activity, and how they might be augmented through internet connection. Discussion of significant objects generated considerable emotion in the participants. We identified objects of comfort and routine, objects that exhibited status, those that fostered independence and connection, and those that symbolized relationships with loved ones. These findings lead us to consider implications for the design of interconnected objects.

Children's interdependent mobility: compositions, collaborations and compromises

This paper discusses findings from Australian research that used a qualitative and participatory methods approach to understand how children develop and negotiate their everyday mobility. Childrens mobility negotiations are discussed in reference to interactions with parents, peers and places; journeys in relation to their multi-modality, compositionality and temporality; and mobility formations in terms of ‘companionship’ – travel companions, companion devices and ambient companions. Childrens mobility is characterised by interdependencies that both enable and configure this mobility. Three themes – compositions, collaborations and compromises – are used to detail and describe some of the ways these interdependencies take shape and unfold.

Reciprocal Habituation: A Study of Older People and the Kinect

We explore relationships between habits and technology interaction by reporting on older peoples experience of the Kinect for Xbox. We contribute to theoretical and empirical understandings of habits in the use of technology to inform understanding of the habitual qualities of our interactions with computing technologies, particularly systems exploiting natural user interfaces. We situate ideas of habit in relation to user experience and usefulness in interaction design, and draw on critical approaches to the concept of habit from cultural theory to understand the embedded, embodied, and situated contexts in our interactions with technologies. We argue that understanding technology habits as a process of reciprocal habituation in which people and technologies adapt to each other over time through design, adoption, and appropriation offers opportunities for research on user experience and interaction design within human-computer interaction, especially as newer gestural and motion control interfaces promise to reshape the ways in which we interact with computers.

Dwelling with media stuff: latencies and logics of materiality in four Australian homes

Extending research into material, media, and cultural geographies of the home, our interest turns to the spatiotemporality of dwelling with information and communication technologies. We pose a number of questions: How do inhabitants and their media stuff adapt to the more rigid physical spaces of a building? How does the building respond to the more rapid changes to dwelling produced by this media stuff? And how are these differing times synchronised? In answer to these questions we present four case studies of homes in Melbourne, Australia, each representative of a particular strategy of synchronisation. They are: the found home, the imagined home, the designed home, and the renovated home. We identify logics informing these homes: the first naturalises the choices made, the second rationalises choices, and the third is one in which dwelling and (re)building are intertwined.

SmartGardenWatering: experiences of using a garden watering simulation

SmartGardenWatering is an innovative software tool that advises gardeners on watering schedules and watering use. In this paper we investigate how expert and novice gardeners respond to advice from this piece of computer software. Do they readily accept it and adapt their activities accordingly, or do they override it with their own local knowledge? We describe the project to develop the simulation, including the design of the user interface, and a study of 20 gardeners using the tool. The focus of the study was to identify factors in the design of the software that influence how well it might intervene in ongoing gardening practice. The findings focus on what brings confidence or a lack of trust in the underlying horticultural model and its application to a particular garden. Finally, we consider how these findings might inform ongoing development of the software.

Homemade cookbooks: a recipe for sharing

In this paper we contribute to the growing body of research into the use and design of technology in the kitchen. This research aims to identify opportunities for designing technologies that may augment existing cooking traditions and in particular familial recipe sharing practices. Using ethnographic techniques, we identify the homemade cookbook as a significant material and cultural artifact in the family kitchen. We report on findings from our study by providing descriptive accounts of various homemade cookbooks, and offer design considerations for digitally augmenting homemade cookbooks.