The studies of home life undertaken by members of the Socio-digital Systems Group (SDS) are being used to inform the design of several early prototype technologies

One area of design-related research has been concerned with designing augmented fridge magnets. This work emerged from observational fieldwork examining the practical uses of fridge surfaces in family homes (see Swan and Taylor, 2005). In particular, it has been driven by the recognition that fridge surfaces lend themselves to being used as communal, household displays and that magnets play a key role in this. The physical properties of magnets allow for information to be easily attached and moved on the fridge (by almost anyone). With little to no forethought, magnets can thus be incorporated into common household tasks. So, for example, drawing family members' attention to an item attached to the fridge is achieved by simply attaching or moving it to the fridge door's centre. The central location of the fridge and its frequent use affords its role as a 'public' display and magnets allow for the straightforward and casual manipulation of information.

An underlying motivation to this design work is to build simple functioning technologies that are easily incorporated into people's everyday practices. The premise here is that simple solutions could be designed so that they can be combined to offer more functionality in a progressive fashion. That way, complexity arises through people's own real-world experiences with technology and does so in ways that are intelligible and expected. Magnets, and possible augmentations of them, are seen to be well-suited to this approach. In their most basic form, the shear simplicity of magnets make them almost compelling to use. With minor additions, we might also imagine how different magnets could provide a host of other compelling but easily understood features.

Below, we offer two crude illustrations of this less is more approach to design. In the first, the magnets are augmented so that they can be set to glow (or pulsate) after a set period of minutes, hours or days. The units of time associated with each magnet are indicated by each magnet's relative size, as well as its markings. Relatedly, a magnet could be designed that glowed or pulsated when moved, gradually fading in brightness over time. Both of these ideas offer additional ways for drawing attention to selected items on the fridge.

With this perspective, organising systems can be seen to provide a powerful resource to examine home life and contemplate the design of technologies for the home; they reveal how technologies might be fashioned to meet the pragmatic and social arrangements in family life.

A second possibility might be to give households the ability to assign specific meanings to magnets by sending or 'beaming' content to them. Here, the intention would be to build on people's apparent penchant for taking ownership of certain areas of the fridge and using magnets to mark out their territories.

Taylor, A. S., Harper, R., Swan, L., Izadi, S., Sellen, A. and Perry, M. Homes that make us smart. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Special Issue, At Home with IT: Pervasive Computing in the Domestic Space (in press).

Taylor, A. S., Eardley, R., Hodges, S., Regan, T., Sellen, A., Swan, L. and Wood, K. R. Augmenting refrigerator magnets: why less is sometimes more. Fourth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Nordichi '06, Oslo, Norway, (2006), 115-124.

Eardley, R., Swan, L., Sellen, A., Taylor, A. S., Hodges, S., Wood, K. R. and Williams, L. (2005, Sept 11-14) Designing Augmented Refrigerator Magnets. Ubicomp '05, Poster Session. Tokyo, Japan.

Swan, L., & Taylor, A. S. Notes on fridge doors. Conference on Human Factors and Computing systems, CHI '05. Portland, OR, (2005), 1813-1816.