Domestic Routines

1
Domestic Routines Design for the Home

• Andy Crabtree
• Tom Rodden

2
New Focus

• Domestic environment as new focus.
• New user groups elderly, disabled, mentally
  impaired
• New tools design approaches needed for the home

3
Work vs. Home

• Production efficiency are not just about
  capital gains, there are other human needs
• Goals not clearly defined change by situation
• Home is not characterized by a common orientation
  to a shared work objective.

4
Routines

• Routines are the very glue of everyday life
• Routines establish who does what, where things
  live, how/when things are done
• Routines establish expectations

5
Ethnographic Methodology

• Less gatekeepers accept members of the
  household
• Hawthorne effect
• No ethnographer present, video recording,
  spontaneous logging

6
Mail Routine

• Central to coordination in the home
• Information lives in places
• Location indicates states of work flow
• Mail visualizes what it is about, who it is from,
  and who may be recipient and entitled to open

7
Places of Communication

• Ecological Habitats
• where communication media live
• Activity Centers
• where media are produced, consumed transformed
• Coordinate Displays
• where media are displayed to help coordinate
  residents activities

8
Home Traffic

• Sequences of action articulate spatial temporal
  distribution of info around the home
• Traffic informs inhabitants on how to manage
  collaborative activities and inform of
  outstanding jobs to be done

9

• Piecemeal smart home tech needs to be built
• Pattern language. Be aware of existing artifacts
  and surfaces
• Digital media needs to be mobile, beyond the
  workstation, cohabitate with physical artifacts