Nurturing Technologies in the Domestic Environment:
Feeling Comforted, Cared for, and Connected at Home
A workshop Monday, September 18, 2006 at the Newport Beach Marriott, part of the UbiComp 2006 conference.
Organizers:
Ame Elliott (PARC), Scott D. Mainwaring (Intel Research), Phoebe Sengers (Cornell University), Allison Woodruff (Intel Research)
Overview:
This workshop will explore the potential for technology to support the experience of being nurtured in the home. Emerging practices (observed or imagined) around nurturance in the home will be explored using the lenses of architectural space and social context. These practices will inform proposals for the design of nurturing technology for a variety of domains including healthcare, entertainment, education, spiritual practice, and communication. Negative examples of invasive or harmful domestic technologies are also welcome, particularly if they suggest positive corrective possibilities. The goals of the workshop are to 1) gain an understanding of emerging practices of using technology for nurturance and 2) propose designs for technology that can nurture people.
For additional details, including proposed activities, read the complete proposal.
Keywords:
Architecture, boundary management, conflict resolution, domesticity, education, emotional response, environmental design, home, nurturance, privacy, sanctuary, social connections, spirituality, stress, wellness.
Topics:
We welcome submissions from technologists, social scientists, designers, and architects on any topic related to technology in the home and nurturance. Submissions may be from any application area including:
o Healthcare: What kinds of domestic technology could heal people, or help keep them well? How can technology address a group’s “health,” not just an individual’s health? What alternatives to medical frameworks show promise in this domain?
o Entertainment: How might entertainment technologies change if they were explicitly designed to support nurturance? What is the impact of on-demand, controllable media delivery systems like TiVo?
o Education: How can new forms of technology help in the domestic nurturance and education of children, and of adults? How does the role of nurturing technology differ by lifestage? What new forms of “home schooling” might be possible?
o Spiritual Practice: Grounding the discussion of spiritual experiences in the built environment has the potential to more richly evoke the context in which those ephemeral experiences take place, leading to design questions such as how technology might be integrated into the religious objects, such as books, candles, cups, icons, prayer rugs, etc. kept in the home.
o Communication: How does technology support people's needs for social connection? Does technology reinforce or undermine the role of the home as a socio-economic unit?
To unify discussion across technologies addressing diverging domain-specific needs, the workshop will focus on understanding the architectural space and social context within which domestic technologies exist. In addition to submissions addressing the overlap of technologies that nurture with a particular domain, submissions are also welcome that address the relationship of nurturing technology to ubiquitous computing research in general, such as:
o What are unintended consequences of nurturing technologies? Can an environment be too nurturing for the occupant’s–or society’s–own good?
o To what extent is technology itself responsible for the problems nurturing technology is intended to solve? Is living in a smart home so stressful it makes you ill?
o What disciplines must be brought together, and how, to effectively research nurturing technology?
o Can TV be a form of nurturance? Can talking on the telephone? Communicating or playing online?
o How can knowledge about nurturing technology be encoded and shared with others?
Submissions:
Email questions or submissions to aelliott at parc.com. 15 participants will be selected from a range of disciplinary perspectives on the basis of the thoughtfulness and originality of their submissions. Submissions may be in any format, but should be 2-4 pages long and include a description of interest in the topic of nurturing technologies in the home and a biographical paragraph. The organizers encourage the use of descriptions and illustrations of proposed technologies to promote or hinder nurturance.
Important dates:
June 28, 2006: Submissions due via email.
July 24, 2006: Notification of acceptance.
September 18, 2006: Workshop takes place at Newport Beach Marriott.
