Browsing by Author "Elliot, Kathryn"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Awareness and Coordination: A Calendar for Families
    (2005-05-27) Elliot, Kathryn; Carpendale, Sheelagh
    In this paper, we describe the AwareCo calendar visualization, designed to provide a means for awareness and coordination between family members with diverse schedules. The AwareCo calendar system does this by supporting the three major domestic calendar uses: Coordination and Negotiation of schedules, Review and Reminders of what is to come, and Awareness of the locations and activities of others. We first present the calendar s persona based design process. We then describe the visualization and interaction, and discuss how it supports family calendar qualities and uses.
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    Building Flexible Displays for Awareness and Interaction
    (2004-05-17) Elliot, Kathryn; Greenberg, Saul
    This video illustrates a set of flexible ambient devices that can be connected to any available information source and that provide a simple means for people to move from awareness into interaction.
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    Location-Dependant Information Appliances for the Home
    (2007-01-02) Elliot, Kathryn; Watson, Mark; Neustaedter, Carman; Greenberg, Saul
    Ethnographic studies of the home revealed the fundamental roles that physical locations and context play in how household members understand and manage conventional information. Yet we also know that digital information is becoming increasing important to households. The problem is that this digital information is almost always tied to traditional computer displays, which inhibits its incorporation into household routines. Our solution, called location-dependant information appliances, exploits both home location and context (as articulated in ethnographic studies) to enhance the role of ambient displays in the home setting; these displays provide home occupants with both background awareness of an information source and foreground methods to gain further details if desired. The novel aspect is that home occupants assign particular information to locations within a home in a way that makes sense to them. As a device is moved to a particular location, that information is automatically mapped to that device along with hints on how it should be displayed.
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    Sticky Spots and Flower Pots: Two Case Studies in Location-Based Home Technology Design
    (2006-04-11) Elliot, Kathryn; Neustaedter, Carman; Greenberg, Saul
    Ethnographic studies of domestic environments have shown the fundamental role that contextual locations play in helping people understand and manage communication information. Yet it is not clear how this knowledge can be applied to the design of home technologies to effectively support the routines of home inhabitants. For this reason, we present two case studies in home technology design that use the results of previous ethnographic studies on domestic locations to motivate the designs and to make them location-based. The first case is StickySpots a location-based messaging system that allows household members to send short digital messages to various places in their home. The second case is location-dependant information appliances a pair of physical ambient displays that show different information depending on where they are placed within the home. We reflect on these case studies to motivate and discuss an initial set of guidelines for location-based design in the home.
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    Time, Meaning and Ownership: the Value of Location in the Home
    (2004-10-01) Elliot, Kathryn; Neustaedter, Carmen; Greenberg, Saul
    Ubiquitous computing researchers suggest that technology embedded within the home can augment communication and coordination of home inhabitants. Our goal in this paper is to inform the design of effective home information systems, where we determine how households now manage communication and coordination. Through contextual interviews, we identify four types of communicative information found in homes: reminders and notes, awareness and scheduling, visual displays and alerts, and resource coordination. We found that these information types are created and understood by home inhabitants as a function of contextual locations within the home. We also found that the choice of location is highly nuanced. Location affects the time when others need to interact with that information, the meaning of that information and what needs to be done with it, and the ownership: who this information belongs to and who should receive it.
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    Where Are You and When Are You Coming Home? Foundations of Interpersonal Awareness
    (2004-10-01) Neustaedter, Carmen; Elliot, Kathryn; Tang, Anthony; Greenberg, Saul
    A barely explored frontier in HCI is how computers can augment the everyday social world of home inhabitants. Within this rich setting, our own focus is on how people naturally maintain interpersonal awareness for members of their household and other individuals in their personal lives. We carried out an exploratory study designed to: a) define the interpersonal relationships critical to home members, and b) articulate the needs of home members for maintaining awareness of the activities and lives of these people. Our results identify three types of interpersonal awareness: home, intimate, and extended awareness. For each type, we identify the people for whom this awareness is desired; the actual awareness information wanted; and the current techniques people use to maintain this awareness. Our results also identify two problems that inhibit people s maintenance of this awareness: time constraints, and distance/time separation. These results motivate and lay the foundations for groupware that augments how home inhabitants maintain interpersonal awareness.