LINC in the Home: Field Trials of a Digital Family Calendar

Digital family calendars have the potential to help families coordinate, yet they must be designed to easily fit within existing routines or will simply not be used. To understand the critical factors affecting digital family calendar design, we extended LINC, an inkable family calendar, and conducted a four-week field study of its adoption and use. We found that a digital family calendar must be designed to provide at-a-glance awareness from a highly visible location within the home; provide flexibility in location selection; and, be accessible from outside locations (e.g., work) so that people can view and update it as needed.