[Air-L] CfP: CHI 2013 Workshop on Studying Technology in the Home

Sarah Martindale dr.sarah.martindale at gmail.com
Mon Dec 17 08:34:27 PST 2012


Call for Participation:

METHODS FOR STUDYING TECHNOLOGY IN THE HOME A workshop to be held as part
of ACM CHI 2013.

April 27th, 2013.

Palais de Congrès, Paris, France.

Position Papers due: January 11th, 2013.

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CONTACT

Website: http://studyingthehome.wp.horizon.ac.uk/

Please email us with any queries or ideas at: studyingthehome at gmail.com

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OVERVIEW

This workshop will explore the methods used to study our interactions with
technology in home contexts. We will share practices, identify key issues
and potential for innovations in this space.

Technology is becoming ever more integral to our home lives, and visions
such as ubiquitous computing, smart technologies and the Internet of Things
represent a further stage of this development. However studying
interactions and experiences in the home, and drawing understanding from
this to inform design, is a substantial challenge for many researchers in
Human-Computer Interaction and other disciplines.

In collecting data, understanding current practices, and evaluating
potential designs, researchers need to consider a range of specific issues,
such as domestication processes and intrusiveness. We also need to
understand how varied relationships, activities, objects and physical
spaces constitute our individual home lives. New technologies present
opportunities for further data to be collected in home environments, but
require a deep understanding of issues specific to home life.

This workshop will bring together a cross-disciplinary group of researchers
with experiences of researching technology in the home, in order to map the
space of methods in use, identify connections, tensions and gaps, and
explore the potential for further innovation to meet the challenges we
face. Together we will develop a coherent understanding of this
methodological space, and identify connections and gaps, where further
development of methods can occur to overcome issues specific to studying
the home.

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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

We invite you to submit a 2-4 page position paper, based on your interests
and experiences with studying technology in the home. This paper should
outline a method that you have used in your research, and critically
reflect on the application of this method to a study related to the home.
It should then highlight the particular challenges faced, how the method
used was, or could be, combined with other approaches, and how it could be
further refined.

We invite contributions from researchers working in areas including, but
not restricted to:

-Ethnographic or observational studies in homes, including dormitories and
shared buildings

-Approaches to exploring design through narratives, e.g. scenarios or user
enactments

-Prototype design and evaluation studies using field trials in homes, lab
studies and smart home demonstrators built for research purposes

-Living Lab and action research approaches to innovation related to the home

-Automated approaches to capturing or analysing quantitative data about
activities in the home

-Application areas such as medical, assistive and e-health technologies,
media and entertainment, smart appliances, smart grids, behaviour change,
technologies for families, children and the elderly, home automation and
many others where the home is a key context of use.

In particular, we invite submissions which explore this space from an
interdisciplinary perspective, and consider how the research areas above
are combined in research projects. For example how ethnographic methods can
be used in conjunction with creative design processes, or how qualitative
understanding can be used in conjunction with quantitative data collected
from sensors and logs of activity around the home.

Submissions due: January 11th 2013.

Notifications: February 8th 2013.

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ORGANISERS

Tim Coughlan, Michael Brown & Sarah Martindale, University of Nottingham,
UK.

Rob Comber & Thomas Ploetz, Newcastle University, UK.

Kerstin Leder Mackley & Val Mitchell, Loughborough University, UK.

Sharon Baurley, Brunel University, UK.



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