@home with IT
Andy Sloane
Professor of Telematics
The home computer
Is this a home computer?
Or this?
IT @ 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
Using IT in the home

The last 10 years has seen a huge
growth in home “computing”
Internet
access
from
home
2004
(UK Gov)
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
What is a home?
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…
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
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
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
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)
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
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)
Conflict

ICTs can be used as markers of territory and
power
– e.g. Young person’s 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
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
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?
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
Methods used

Ethnography (even in limited forms)
– Long term, labour intensive

Use of trial/experimental homes
– Special situation – not “home”

Using the researcher’s own home
– Special sort of user
– Not easy to extrapolate
Future homes

Smart homes
– Many scenarios and examples
– Mainly automation
– Remote control lights, heating and ventilation
– Audio/Video networks

Conspicuous and visible technology
Example systems
JDS technologies
Example – Home safety assistant
VHI Healthcare
Ubiquitous computing

Implicit, hidden and pervasive technology
 Meeting many needs
– Physical
– Social
– Psychological
– Emotional
New types of equipment

Interactive surfaces
 Everyday objects with intelligence
– Tables, chairs, walls, pictures

Emotional communication devices
– Well-being monitors
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
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/
Personal monitors
Picture frames – with emotional/well-being information
Mynatt and Rowan, (2000)
New interactions

Affective computing
 Gesture and haptic interfaces
 Eye-tracking

Usability and acceptability issues
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
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
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
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.
Home computer?
Submarine console