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The Internet-of-things (IoT) embeds computing in everyday objects, but has largely focused on new devices while ignoring the home's many existing possessions. We present a field study with 10 American families to understand how these possessions could be included in the smart home through upcycling. We describe three patterns for how families collaborate around home responsibilities; we explore families' mental models of home that may be in tension with existing IoT systems; and we identify ways that families can more easily imagine a smart home that includes their existing possessions. These insights can help us design an upcycled approach to IoT that supports users in reconfiguring objects (and social roles as mediated by objects) in a way that is sensitive to what will be displaced, discarded, or made obsolete. Our findings inform the design of future lightweight systems for the upcycled home.
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On the Making of Alternative Data Encounters: The Odd Interpreters
While data are the backbone for home Internet of Things’ (IoT) functional and economic model, data remain elusive and abstract for home dwellers. In response, we present the Odd Interpreters (OIs): a collection of three artifacts that materialize alternative ways of engaging with IoT data in home environments. The OIs recast home data as imaginative sounds (Broadcast), fading fabric (Soft Fading), and cookie recipes (Data Bakery) with the intent to reveal the hidden human labor and material infrastructures of data and to critique data's assumed objectivity. Following a Research-through-Design approach, we unpack design events that mark our process for making the Odd Interpreters. We conclude with a discussion around the need for pluralizing data encounters, the tactic of designing between illusion and precision, and a reflection on living with the prototypes while designing.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1947696
- PAR ID:
- 10465941
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 20
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581323
