home with IT

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_at_home with IT

• Andy Sloane
• Professor of Telematics

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The home computer
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Is this a home computer?
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Or this?
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IT _at_ home - Outline

• What is meant by home
• The effect of information technology
• The changes in IT from personal to pervasive
• The research problems of studying IT/ICT in the
  home environment
• IT Information technology
• ICT Information and communication technology

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Using IT in the home

• The last 10 years has seen a huge growth in home
  computing

Internet access from home 2004 (UK Gov)
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What is IT in the home?

• Various concepts of the home computer
• Different contexts of use
• Individual use (e.g. homework)
• Collective and co-operative (e.g shopping)
• But mainly
• leisure and entertainment related

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What is a home?
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Home?

• Difficulty in definition of the home.
• Where we live?
• Where we ARE? (Wise 2000)
• Aspects of home in all locations of choice
• Establishing a milieu
• Sounds, scents and smells, arranging
  objects/bodies, symbols

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Home?

• House ? Home
• Especially with the embedding of ICT
• Languages/Cultures differ in their definition of
  home
• North/South Europe differences
• Not inanimate objects
• Presence, habits, effects of others
• May not need a place but other people

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Research problem

• We need to understand the dynamics of the home to
  be able to study the effects of the technology
  within it.
• Not a technical computing problem but
• Social
• Psychological
• Economic
• Cultural

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Research for future systems

• Need to analyse use and behaviour
• Assist design of future systems
• Improve interfaces
• Aid interaction and
• Increase usability
• Within the context and culture of the home

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Technology in the home

• Our domesticity is shaped by social and
  technological changes associated with
  industrialisation (Silverstone R 1993)
• ICTs fundamentally affect what we mean by home
  (changing the definition)
• ICTs have liberated our domesticity from
  dependence on physical location (extending the
  location)

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Effects on home life

• Home life now includes computing on a daily basis
  (changing the definition)
• As a mediator with
• Email between individuals
• Virtual communities
• File sharing
• Web cameras
• Allow home to be experienced from a distance
  (extending the location)
• Email and other ICT is location-independent

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Families

• Family a range of sociologically disparate
  relations
• Families live in households a moral economy
• Where the private meets the public
• 90 of British families with a computer
  experience arguments over who gets to use the
  household computer (Livingstone and Bober, 2004)

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Conflict

• ICTs can be used as markers of territory and
  power
• e.g. Young persons use of mobile phones
• 43 per cent of parents of 9-17 year-olds impose
  rules on Internet use (Livingstone and Bober,
  2004)
• ICTs are both products and producers of shifts in
  our domesticity

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Problems of studying the home?

• The home is not an office even with
  teleworking! (Hindus 1999)
• But work and home are intertwined
• Consumers are not knowledge workers
• Different power structures exist
• Decisions are made differently
• Families are not organizations
• They are complex, dynamic structures and are all
  different

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Consumer input

• Need informed consent
• Easier in the workplace
• Non-standard users
• Homes can involve children and the aged
• Difficult to define the boundaries of a study
• Interviewers as guests or intruders?

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Data gathering

• How do we gather information about the home
• Any intrusion in the home will affect the results
  of the experiment (Hawthorne/Heisenberg effect)
• Questionnaires
• Interviews
• Logs
• Diaries

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Methods used

• Ethnography (even in limited forms)
• Long term, labour intensive
• Use of trial/experimental homes
• Special situation not home
• Using the researchers own home
• Special sort of user
• Not easy to extrapolate

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Future homes

• Smart homes
• Many scenarios and examples
• Mainly automation
• Remote control lights, heating and ventilation
• Audio/Video networks
• Conspicuous and visible technology

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Example systems
JDS technologies
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Example Home safety assistant
VHI Healthcare
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Ubiquitous computing

• Implicit, hidden and pervasive technology
• Meeting many needs
• Physical
• Social
• Psychological
• Emotional

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New types of equipment

• Interactive surfaces
• Everyday objects with intelligence
• Tables, chairs, walls, pictures
• Emotional communication devices
• Well-being monitors

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Interactive Surface - Dynamo
Dynamo - a public multi-user interactive surface
that supports the cooperative sharing and
exchange of a wide range of media in a social
setting
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Intelligent table
Scenario - when a family member arrives at home
and places their Orange mobile phone on the
Intelligent Table, the table could recognise who
owns that phone, and offer any of their favourite
services latest news, horoscopes, gig guide,
sport alerts, weather etc through the Message
Cube, pre-programmed within existing Orange
services through their web site promoting Brand
values and connectivity between Orange and the
Home. Designed by Dominic Smith for Orange.
http//www.intelligenttable.net/
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Personal monitors
Picture frames with emotional/well-being
information Mynatt and Rowan, (2000)
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New interactions

• Affective computing
• Gesture and haptic interfaces
• Eye-tracking
• Usability and acceptability issues

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Problems

• Security
• Information
• Viruses, denial of service attacks,
• Privacy
• Need to control outside access to personal
  information
• Control
• Complex technology needs technical expertise
• Access
• Based on need or ability to pay?
• Ethical problem
• Need to question the development of technology
  when it may harm the user

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HCI Issues

• Development of new style guides and standards for
  new forms of human-computer interface
• Principles for accessing the same data and
  functions for multiple heterogeneous devices
• New techniques for understanding what people do
  and why
• Defining the equivalent of task in a leisure
  context
• Testing techniques for the home

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Conclusions

• It is difficult to define EXACTLY what a home is
• The home is a complex area to study
• ICT has a profound effect on the form and
  function of what we call home
• Accurate data gathering is still an active
  research topic

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Conclusions

• New paradigm new problems
• Technical development alone is not enough
• Multi-disciplinary research is essential
• New devices will be invented
• But, only some of them will be useful.

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Home computer?
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Submarine console