Sonja Pedell

Mediating intimacy: designing technologies to support strong-tie relationships

Intimacy is a crucial element of domestic life, and many interactive technologies designed for other purposes have been appropriated for use within intimate relationships. However, there is a deficit in current understandings of how technologies are used within intimate relationships, and how to design technologies to support intimate acts. In this paper we report on work that has addressed these deficits. We used cultural probes and contextual interviews and other ethnographically informed techniques to investigate how interactive technologies are used within intimate relationships. From this empirical work we generated a thematic understanding of intimacy and the use of interactional technologies to support intimate acts. We used this understanding to inform the design of intimate technologies. A selection of our design concepts is also presented.

Evaluating the usability of a mobile guide: The influence of location, participants and resources

When designing a usability evaluation, choices must be made regarding methods and techniques for data collection and analysis. Mobile guides raise new concerns and challenges to established usability evaluation approaches. Not only are they typically closely related to objects and activities in the users immediate surroundings, they are often used while the user is ambulating. This paper presents results from an extensive, multi-method evaluation of a mobile guide designed to support the use of public transport in Melbourne, Australia. In evaluating the guide, we applied four different techniques; field-evaluation, laboratory evaluation, heuristic walkthrough and rapid reflection. This paper describes these four approaches and their respective outcomes, and discusses their relative strengths and weaknesses for evaluating the usability of mobile guides.

Family storytelling for grandparents and grandchildren living apart

Grandparents may feel revitalized when a grandchild joins the family, but the physical separation that often exists between grandparents and grandchildren can make it difficult to develop a close relationship. Current communication technologies, such as the phone, are inadequate for developing close relationships with children. This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a technology probe exploring how technology can be designed to alleviate this problem. Based on the evaluation, four important themes for designing technology for distributed intergenerational bonding are elicited and discussed. The four themes are Conversational Context (to have something to talk about), Facilitation (to be given the opportunity to talk), Diversified Interaction Forms (to maintain attention of the child) and Supporting Grandparent caring for grandchild (to adapt activity to the mood of the child).

Social isolation of older people: the role of domestic technologies

This paper explores the role of domestic technologies for addressing social isolation of older people. Despite the increasing use of information and communication technologies, social isolation remains an issue amongst older people. Assistive technologies address important health needs, but there is a lack of social technologies that adequately deal with social isolation. This paper contributes to knowledge about the everyday life of older people for the purpose of designing appropriate social technology. We present an overview of the findings of a three-stage study---an expert survey, a field study and a design workshop---and describe a set of needs to inform the design of technology for ameliorating the social isolation of older people.

Ethics in Evaluating a Sociotechnical Intervention With Socially Isolated Older Adults

The purpose of this article is to consider how ethical principles can inform the effective design and implementation of technology-based interventions that aim to promote the well-being of socially isolated older adults. We evaluated a new iPad application with small groups of older adults. In this article, we reflect on the ethical issues encountered at each stage of the research process. Drawing on the ethical principles of beneficence, research merit and integrity, justice, and respect, we identify key issues to consider in the future design and implementation of social isolation interventions that use new technologies. Key issues include (a) providing sufficient support to facilitate ongoing social interactions, (b) managing older adults’ expectations, (c) providing encouragement without coercion, and (d) responding to individual needs. We conclude that it is important to report on ethical challenges incurred when evaluating social isolation interventions to inform future research in this important area.

Visualizing use context with picture scenarios in the design process

The context in which a device is used has a major impact on mobile device design. Despite this, there are few system design methods that assist user interface designers to represent use context in a useful and systematic manner throughout the whole design process. Current scenario-based design approaches are able to represent context, but still present a challenge to support a shared understanding of the rich context in which activities take place and in encoding dynamic use context due to time issues such as sequential and parallel actions. This paper reports on a method called Picture Scenarios. The method was used by four design teams whilst designing mobile information devices for use in a public square. Results show that picture scenarios provide an effective way of communicating and debating use context with design partners. The suggested format of the picture scenarios facilitates to represent use context during design activities in a systematic way. These scenarios are easy to create, easy to use, and capture important contextual details about activity that is difficult to represent otherwise.

Touch screen ensemble music: collaborative interaction for older people with dementia

This paper presents new touch-screen collaborative interaction models for people with dementia. The authors argue that dementia technology has yet to focus on group musical interactions. The project aims to contribute to dementia care while addressing a significant gap in current literature. Research includes observations and two system trials exploring contrasting musical scenarios: the performance of abstract electronic music and the distributed performance of J. S. Bachs Goldberg Variations. Findings presented in this paper suggest that dementia people are able to successfully perform and engage in collaborative music performance activities with little or no scaffolded instruction.

Having fun at home: interleaving fieldwork and goal models

We aim to make sense of a perplexing human experience (fun) as it occurs in a recently discovered place for socio-technical study (the home). Our toolkit includes technology probes, associated fieldwork and models from software engineering. We describe how we interleave the probes and models. As the work will please neither modeling nor fieldwork purists, we enunciate the benefits of our ambidextrous approach.

What's special about aging

Community + Culture features practitioner perspectives on designing technologies for and with communities. We highlight compelling projects and provocative points of view that speak to both community technology practice and the interaction design field as a whole. --- Christopher A. Le Dantec, Editor

Socially-Oriented Requirements Engineering: Software Engineering Meets Ethnography

We outline an approach for eliciting, understanding, and representing the cultural aspects of the domestic environment for the purpose of system design. We use agent models as shared artefacts to represent the everyday cultural life of the home. These representations build an understanding between the people that own this culture and the people responsible for technology development. We argue the necessity of knowing about a formal representation of these cultural aspects to inform design decisions and develop technologies that truly satisfy and support the everyday life of families. Our aim is to express socially-oriented requirements for technology. We show the usefulness of this approach on a case study that investigates interactions between grandparents and grandchildren who are geographically separated.