Shoji: Communicating Privacy -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: A shared living space entails certain privacy issues, making communication between roommates a prime factor of the domestic experience. Our interactive door breaks these barriers, sharing information concerning privacy needs.
Abstract » People sharing a living space in Québec City chose to do so to take advantage of various practical advantages However, this way of life is far from perfect. Indeed, the lodger’s need for
privacy is an aspect of shared accommodation that can be very hard to reconcile with the needs of the other roommates. Based on our user research, we were able to determine that this aspect
of the domestic experience is an important issue with regard to sharing accommodation. Roommates can be encouraged to communicate delicate emotions differently through Shoji, an
interactive door that acts as an ice-breaker and helps to avoid awkward situations, thus improving the quality of life and the domestic experience for everyone.
fridgeTop: Bringing home-like experience back to kitchen space -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: fridgeTop is a touch-based fridge surface application, which aims to help re-create home-like collaborative and communicative aspects of a kitchen in a shared living space.
Abstract » Owing to cultural and time zone differences, international students studying far away from their
homes struggle to re-create home-like experiences. Living in a shared accommodation with new people further adds to this struggle, since common spaces become non-conducive to home-like activities. We study kitchen space in this context, and offer a solution called fridgeTop, which seeks to reduce the threshold of a kitchen’s perceived public space in a shared accommodation by fostering familiar family interactions on a smart fridge surface.
weRemember: letting AD patients to enjoy their home and their families -
Student Design CompetitionAbstract » weRemember was designed to provide elderly people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) a relative independence at home and a new way to communicate and interact with their family. Our solution offers support for AD patients helping them to longer deal with the disease while living at home with their family instead of moving into a nursing home. Following an iterative design approach, a number of prototypes were evaluated with potential users and their feedback was used to enhance the family experience. During the prototype evaluation we found that the system could have a positive impact both on the relationship between the patient and the caregivers as well as on the patient home experience.
Moodcasting: Home as Shared Emotional Space -
Student Design CompetitionAbstract » The home experience revolves around an intangible yet pervasive dynamic: shared emotional space, in which members of the home are influenced by each other’s expressions of mood as well as the associated values, activities, people and spaces that influence mood. The Moodcasting system is a set of pervasive and ambient technologies designed to interactively enhance mood awareness and understanding in a home by representing mood and the supporting contexts in easy-to-understand and actionable representations.
Feelybean: Communicating Touch Over Distance. -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: After looking into existing methods for augmenting communication in Long Distance Relationships, we introduce “feelybean”; our proposed solution to the problem, using tactile feedback to communicate touch.
Abstract » Increasingly, due to work or study reasons, many couples find themselves living apart, in different cities or even countries, experiencing the challenges of a long distance relationship. Much research has been conducted into helping couples overcome the problems associated with long distance relationships (LDRs) and many steps have been made towards solving it through enabling them to keep in contact via video, audio, or visual artifacts. Our approach supplements these traditional communication mediums by exploiting “touch” – a sensation that is dominant in almost every relationship. We designed, built and tested a prototype touch device, with the intention of bringing couples closer together during a regular Skype conversation, by allowing each to feel the other’s touch. Our study showed that participants found touching each other in this way was intriguing, enabling them to feel the other person’s hand touching theirs at a distance, and in doing so bridging the distance between them.
Habitag: Virtually Home -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: Habitag is a prototype design trying to solve a problem newlyweds may face when planning for their lives together.
Abstract » In Singapore, many young adults do not move out of their family home even after marriage. We conducted several interviews and identified that moving into the marital home is a problem for many newlyweds. Using data from surveys, interviews and a cultural probe, we designed Habitag – a private smartphone application that targets newly married couples in Singapore, helping them to plan for and adjust to their new home in a collaborative and playful manner. Testing results indicate that Habitag may help to reduce the amount of frustration and difficulties that newlyweds face during these critical processes. Finally, we discuss Habitag’s potential transferability to other Asian countries.
MeCasa: A Family Virtual Space -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: MeCasa: a tool for connecting family members who have been geographically separated.
Abstract » We present MeCasa, a tool for connecting family members who have been geographically separated. MeCasa was designed with the intent to accomplish three objectives: 1. Increase the emotional connection between displaced family members, 2. Mimic the privacy provided by an actual home, 3. Make the interaction fun and interesting to use. A mid-fidelity prototype was built and tested to meet these objectives. Our results showed that MeCasa successfully bridged the emotional disconnect created when families physically drifted apart.
Anchor: Connecting Sailors to Home -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: Anchor is a tablet application that links sailors to home no matter where service takes them. It uses asynchronous media to synthesize synchronous messages with or without actual data transfer.
Abstract » Maintaining a connection to home is difficult for deployed sailors in the US Navy. At sea, data transfer and personal privacy are limited, the consequences of which are detrimental to the romantic relationships of sailors with stateside partners. We propose Anchor, a tablet application that uses asynchronous messages to synthesize synchronous communication when there is no data transfer. Anchor helps sailors and their romantic partners communicate using media-rich messages, and it creates a connection to home no matter where service takes them.
SharryBot: A Mobile Agent for Facilitating Communication in a Neighborhood -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: A concept of a mobile agent ``SharryBot'' which can distribute gifts among the neighborhood and thereby connecting people in an effective way.
Abstract » In this work we present a possible solution to problems related to interaction between neighbors.
To explore the problem space we conducted interviews in the canton of Zurich in Switzerland. Although our interviews showed that the participants are generally happy with their neighborhoods, there are still some barriers to overcome in personal communication between neighbors. These are mostly time related or because of overacted cautiousness. The interviews further showed that gift-giving often improves relationships and enables communication. These findings led to a couple of design ideas of which we chose the most promising to investigate further. Our final solution was a concept of a mobile agent ``SharryBot'' which can distribute gifts among the neighborhood and thereby connecting people in an effective way. The robot should not only make the neighbors known to each other but it should also improve face-to-face communication when neighbors communicate later.
StoryCubes: Connecting elders in independent living through storytelling -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: StoryCubes is a system that helps residents of independent living communities make connections through sharing stories, and express their identity in terms of their unique background, interests, and values.
Abstract » One's home is often a place that reflects and affirms one's identity, but when an elderly person moves to a group living environment, they must re-assert themselves and make new social connections in a place that may inadvertently frame them in terms of their disabilities. We present StoryCubes, a system that helps residents of independent living communities make connections through sharing stories, and express their identity in terms of their unique background, interests, and values. StoryCubes centers around the creation and sharing of tangible paper objects which display and contain the stories of residents using QR code technology. StoryCubes can be displayed together, where residents and visitors can listen to stories within any cube that piques their interest. By giving residents a way to discover and share stories, they are able to gain a greater understanding of their fellow residents, helping them to better appreciate and become more comfortable in their shared living experience.
Home2Home: A “Lightweight” Gift-Giving Portal Between Homes -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: Home2Home is a lightweight, smartboard device that supports family communication between family members in different locations. We focus on the familiarity of notepads, “care packages,” and the emotive qualities of handwriting.
Abstract » As families become more dispersed within countries and around the world, the ability to maintain frequent and personalized communication becomes more challenging. Home2Home is a lightweight, smartboard device with ambient display that supports family communication practices with particular attention to the novice technology user. By leveraging the ease of a whiteboard and instant sharing, the familiarity of notepads and “care packages,” and the emotive qualities of handwriting and voice, Home2Home is an easy-to-learn technology that affords the major communication capacities of other software and devices, together in one place. In this paper, we describe the system and the user-centered design process employed to create it.
Silka: A Domestic Technology to Mediate the Threshold between Connection and Solitude -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: Despite multiple communication technologies, communicating emotions can still be difficult. We present a device that supports long-distance communication by sending “smiles” and communicating presence to the loved ones.
Abstract » Families living apart – with relatives and loved ones in different cities or countries – is not unusual. However, even though multiple communication technologies exist, communicating emotions can still be difficult. In this paper we present Silka: a device that supports long-distance communication by sending “smiles” and communicating presence in between traditional modes of communication, with the goal of enhancing bonds between two individuals or households. Silkaʼs design is based on findings from an online survey, interviews and observations conducted to better understand how people communicate with loved ones and how they feel before and after communication. It aims to address worry and anxiety, which we found characterise the period between regular weekly, fortnightly or monthly calls.
Bzzzt - When Mobile Phones Feel At Home -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: Good vibrations! Use mobile phones' existing capabilities to let the phone sense its surrounding. Within an explorative study, we investigate different approaches on a technical basis.
Abstract » ”I long, as does every human being, to feel at home
wherever I find myself.” - Maya Angelou.
We present Bzzzt, the sketching process for an application
which enables your smart phone to sense its surroundings
to distinguish between familiar and unknown vibes. The
phone will vibrate and record the echoes with its
accelerometer or microphone, analyze those echoes and
distinguish if it has felt the vibrations of this particular
surface before, or not. From this it could potentially
recognize some kind of feeling of being at home or
hominess. Basically, this paper presents a material
exploration for how we potentially could come to use the
accelerometer and the microphone nowadays embedded in
almost all mobile phones.
KidArt: Displaying Children's Art in the Home -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: We present a device to display children’s art in the home that captures the experience families have when their children create art and when they reflect on that art together.
Abstract » In this paper we present a device to display children’s art in the home. Our primary goal was to create a device that can enhance the display of art, capturing the experience families have both when the child creates the art and when they reflect on that art together. The display device removes the burden of organizing and displaying the art children create so that families can enjoy the art in their homes instead.
No Place Like Home: Pet-to-Family Reunification After Disaster -
Student Design CompetitionContribution & Benefit: We introduce No Place Like Home, a socially networked web and mobile platform that facilitates reunification of non-human with human family members following disaster events.
Abstract » Pets are important household members, and their welfare and safety are imperative to the emotional welfare of the family. Displacement of pets after disaster events is a serious matter to families and for public safety at large. People are not willing to evacuate without their non-human family members; many will break through evacuation zones to recover animals left behind. In the 2005 Hurricane Katrina event, over 200,000 pets were displaced, and 95% of them were never reunited with their families. The US Department of Agriculture confirms that the problem of reuniting displaced pets and their guardians at this scale is unfortunately common in disaster events. We introduce No Place Like Home, a socially networked web and mobile platform that facilitates reunification of non-human with human family members following disaster events. No Place Like Home is an effort that supports the formation of small cadres of micro-tasking “digital volunteers” that converge after disasters to do photo- and description-matching; employs a reputation and reward system to encourage use; and uses match-based machine learning techniques to accelerate the manual matching tasks performed by digital volunteers.