Studying and Designing Technology for Domestic Life

Chapter 8

Autobiographical Design in the Home

Carman Neustaedter^∗, Tejinder K. Judge^§,  and Phoebe Sengers^{¶     ∗}School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC, Canada     ^§Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA     ^¶Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Abstract

Home environments are complex, family life is highly dynamic, and technology use is deeply embedded in the dynamic complexity of everyday practices and relationships. These facts present serious challenges to designing and evaluating technologies for the home: understanding the nuances of family life to inform design may be hard, determining family needs for new technology may be difficult, and, during evaluation, conducting field trials across the many locations ...