Chapter 1

An Introduction to Studying and Designing Technology for Domestic Life

Tejinder K. Judge*,  and Carman Neustaedter§     *Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA     §School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC, Canada

Abstract

Performing research and technology design for domestic life is by no means easy. Research and design methods commonly used in the field of human-computer interaction for conducting studies of other settings may not easily translate to studying domestic life, given its richness and complexity. This book documents the new ways in which researchers are studying domestic life, as well as designing and evaluating technology in the context of the home and domestic space. Each chapter is a candid discussion about one or more methods that were successfully used for research studies, with a focus on the challenges the researchers faced while using the methods themselves and the best practices they learned. This introduction chapter lays the foundation for understanding how to use this book and presents a summary of topics that are described in chapters throughout the book.

Keywords

Domestic computing; domestic life; families; human-computer interaction; research; technology design; design evaluation

The Changing Landscape of Computing

As we all know and have experienced, computational technology is now deeply engrained in our lives, from the way we listen to music and watch television to the ways in which we stay connected to people, places, and information. Whether we think about it or not, most people carry and use multiple computational devices throughout their day, including smartphones, laptops, computers, and tablets. There are also hidden or "invisible," computational devices embedded in the everyday things we use, from our cars to our kitchen appliances to our entertainment systems. Thus, we are continually faced with technology usage in our homes, vehicles, workplaces, shopping malls, and virtually every other location we inhabit. This changing landscape of computing and the ubiquity of technology has caused a shift in how we as a society aim to design new technologies and understand their usage. No longer are we concerned just with how one might use a computer at work. Instead, we are interested much more broadly in how technology affects our everyday lives. One important aspect of this is how technology is designed for and used as a part of domestic life within and outside the home for the fulfillment of connection, communication, coordination, social play, and the everyday accomplishment of seemingly mundane domestic activities. With more technology being designed for homes and families comes an increasing need for research in this domain to uncover insights about families' routines and needs for technology design. It is also increasingly important to gain a deep understanding of how technology has changed family relationships and routines and in what ways it will continue to do so. With these shifts comes an increasing challenge for researchers and designers to design new technologies for domestic life, and study and evaluate them to understand how they affect people's routines, activities, and, even more broadly, culture.

The Challenge of Studying and Designing for Domestic Life

Performing research and technology design for domestic life is by no means easy. Family life is increasingly rich and complex. Communication, awareness, and interaction routines are highly nuanced, and family members have different roles and dynamics. These may change from situation to situation or day to day, or vary based on location. Using existing research methods such as a laboratory study may be excruciatingly challenging if not impossible to do in this context. Many domestic activities occur within the context of the home or other private locations that are considered to be sacred places for only family and friends. By this we mean that many of the behaviors and rituals conducted at home are not privy to non-family members or those who do not live there. This makes it increasingly difficult to gather information from families about their actual routines and needs for technology. Domestic life also involves situations and activities that occur outside of the home, often interwoven with work, play, and other events. The notion of getting permission to study a family's activities as the family members move through them in various locations and contexts is, again, increasingly challenging. There is a plethora of books that cover design and research methods in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). They cover topics such as conducting contextual inquiry in workplaces, performing controlled laboratory studies, deploying and studying technologies in the field, conducting interface inspections through formalized processes, and performing usability evaluation studies (Beyer and Holtzblatt 1998; Nielsen 1993; Rosson and Carroll 2002; Dix et al. 1998; Lazar et al. 2010; Hartson et al. 2012). While beneficial, these design and research methods are limited in that their use is not described for any one specific context. This makes it challenging to understand how these methods might be applied to present-day technology research within specific domains. When applied to families and domestic life, the methods may easily require alterations, or new methods may be needed altogether to overcome the complexities of studying domestic environments. Thus, there is a need for documentation on more specialized methods for conducting research in the area of domestic technology design and evaluation. This idea comes from other researchers besides just us. Over the past five years, along with our collaborators, we have organized a series of workshops and special interest group (SIG) sessions at various HCI conferences. These include workshops at the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (Neustaedter et al. 2008), the ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) (Neustaedter et al. 2009; Oduor et al. 2013), and the ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP) (Neustaedter et al. 2010). One common theme that emerged during discussions in each and every workshop was a need for focused documentation on research methods for studying families, domestic life, and domestic technology design. In all cases, workshop attendees had many questions about conducting research with families and in people's homes. They had all experienced challenges in studying families and had explored their own variations on research methods or sought new ways to better study family practices and technology design. As a result of discussions like these, academics, researchers, and designers attending our workshops pointed out that a strong need exists for a collected book on methods for studying and evaluating technologies for families. This book is just that.

The Purpose of This Book

This book documents the ways in which researchers are studying and researching technology design and evaluation in the context of the home and domestic life. However, it is not a typical research methods book. Instead, you can think of this book as the "inside scoop" for people learning how to perform research in the area of domestic life and home technology design. Each chapter is a candid discussion about one or more methods that were successfully used for research studies with a focus on the challenges that the researchers faced while using the methods and the best practices they learned. Chapters document and reveal the challenges and lessons learned by experienced researchers when studying or evaluating domestic technology, the application of existing research and design methods in new situations that require alterations to the methods, and new methods for studying and designing technology for domestic life. The authors of the chapters are established academics or researchers in the field of domestic computing. They have successfully used the methods they describe in the chapters, and most have published the results from their studies using these methods. Of course, one could turn to journal articles or conference papers to learn about the research methods that others are employing when designing technology for domestic life or studying its usage, and we welcome readers to do so. However, such method descriptions will be vastly different than what you will find in this book. Journal articles and conference papers are limited in space, and the focus is often on the results of one's research and not the finer details about the methods employed. Researchers also often utilize tips or tricks they have learned throughout their experiences in conducting research but do not typically discuss these in journal articles or conference papers. This is the focus of our book: the untold stories of how research methods were applied in real research projects, including the ways in which a study might have gone wrong and the steps taken by researchers to fix the problems. It also includes specifics of the research methods used, rather than the typical high-level overview that we often see in journal and conference publications. There is also an underlying theme throughout the book that explores the ethical considerations when studying domestic routines and technology usage practices.

How to Use This Book

With the increasing interest in designing and evaluating technologies for domestic life, this book can serve as...