Domestic 2.0: Constructing Ideas of the Family
Here research is examining how the ‘idea of family’ can be a sociological topic and a design orientation leading to technical innovation and new user experiences. Various research activities are seeking ways of capturing traces of family activity, assembling and creating new representations of these activities, as well as inventing new ways to interact with and display those traces. Ideas about, and tools for, user-generated content (UGC) are salient here, as are concerns with how such content might be combined with broadcast content, and the emergence of what one might call a domestic version of Web 2.0 and, in particular, the idea of mash-ups: hence the eponymous name of this research theme. Examples of projects in this area include Epigraph which has evolved into Homebook, Videoplay, Family Archive, Sonic Gems, and Photo Displays and Digital Postcards. These are exploring various social and technical agendas
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Domestic 2.0: Connecting and Partitioning the Domestic Space
If the idea of constructing family is one theme, then another is the converse: the idea that domestic spaces might be socially and technologically fractionated in ways that people desire. Hence research in this theme is looking at how ‘domestic’ or private settings may be constituted by connections to other places and people and in other cases by partitionings and separations of places and people. Technology is obviously central here, as are social structures and systems of kinship and status, each of which might allow bonds in some cases and inhibitors in others. Example projects here include sociological investigations of Teens’ Bedrooms, Old Folks and Flat Sharers, and technical research into novel ways of creating distinction and cohesion such as Photo Illume and Digital Shoebox.
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Visible Consumption
Whatever the social or technological context, consumption is itself an increasingly important and worrying property of our day and age. We need ways of measuring, assessing and comprehending what our consumption habits are causing. Of course, the issue here is not simply the obvious one – that a PC consumes electricity for example; it is rather that, as we move towards complex eco-systems of technologies, our consumption patterns are becoming opaque and complex. This theme is thus investigating how to design devices and ecosystems that raise awareness, feedback and control in ways that brings visibility to issues of energy consumption and cost however obscure they might have become. Projects here include PARTICIPATE, BigBoard, Photo Illume, Intelligence Work and Home Networks.
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Propinquity
It is now possible to interact with digital objects in numerous ways. It is far from certain which method is ideal or perfect, and certainly there is now little faith in the idea that there might be an ‘ideal’ or ‘natural form of interaction’ that one should orient all interaction experiences toward. This theme is taking the view that there might be benefits from exploring diversity in interaction technique by studying how physical, virtual, kinship, and temporal ‘nearness’ can be leveraged as a design resource for interaction with new systems, devices, and ecologies of devices. Example projects include Picture Puke, BigBoard and Grab and Share.
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Hands-On Computing
Until recently, most computer systems entailed indirect interaction as a method or means for user input. Yet, ordinarily, people use their hands as a primary and direct mechanism for getting to grips with information and material. As new technologies are beginning to allow more direct interaction, just what ‘handedness’ might enable, and how it might be supported is far from clear, however. Simply allowing touch, for example, does not equate to making digital content tangible; making things tangible does not make them suited for all kinds of interaction. This theme is seeking to explore and develop what hands-on computing might mean, where new technologies and techniques that exploit the full richness and expressiveness of physical manipulation and gesture can be combined with new displays and materials to produce interactions beyond analogues of bodily interaction with real objects.
Example projects here include Family Archive, Tangible Gooeys, Shake2Talk, VideoPlay, Designer’s Notebook, E-books and Flutter
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Living with Intelligent Machines
As the role, function and power of computers alters, so the relationship between ourselves and computers affects what one might call our elemental assumptions. Our systems of accountability and intelligence are shifting for example; as our notions of what it means to be human as against machine-like. Research in this theme is investigating the evolving nature of this ‘moral distinction’ between person and machine with a view not simply to characterising philosophical shifts in contemporary consciousness, but with regard to the design of novel devices that reinvent what intelligence might mean. Projects here include the Intelligence Project and Human Values in a Digital Age (HCI 2020).
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