As families develop there is an evolution towards physically distributed, extended families. After children leave the home, parents often feel isolated and disconnected from their children and grandchildren. As parents become older, it becomes more important to strengthen connections, to reassure children that all is well with their elders, and to give elders the confidence to live independently.
Current technologies in computing and communications have great promise for increasing these connections. Microsoft Research has demonstrated how the communication of family members’ location and activity through situated displays in the home can lead to increased levels of family togetherness [1]. Other work by Intel Research showed how the use of RFID in the home could be used to infer activities from user’s interactions with household objects and monitor routine behaviour [2]. By examining routine behaviour it should be possible to confirm that all is well in the home. Our project will develop and combine aspects of these technologies to connect families.
We will couple inexpensive in-home sensor technologies (in the guise of a personal RFID system) with popular micro-blogging tools (like Twitter or Jaiku) to gather and share routine household activities being undertaken by elders, with their children. On the other side, the activities of the children’s families will be shared with the elders. This satisfies the desire of children to keep “loose tabs” on their elderly parents, and the desire of the elders to live independently and keep informed of the activities of their children’s families. While privacy is a potential issue, previous studies have shown that most people are comfortable with allowing their families unfettered access to these types of information [1].
Although the motivation behind this project comes from the example of an extended family, there are important benefits beyond this scenario. Micro-blogging is becoming a popular tool with businesses, families, and individuals for recording the minutiae of their everyday activities. This project will explore the boundaries of what can and should be shared, and gauge the importance of such minutiae in socially connecting colleagues, friends, and families.
[1] Abigail Sellen, Rachel Eardley, Shahram Izadi, Richard Harper. The Whereabouts Clock: Early Testing of a Situated Awareness Device. CHI 2006, April 2227, 2006, Montreal, Qubec, Canada. ACM 1-59593-298-4/06/0004.
[2] Matthai Philipose, Kenneth P. Fishkin, Mike Perkowitz, Donald J. Patterson, Dieter Fox, Henry Kautz, and Dirk Hahnel, Inferring Activities from Interactions with Objects. Intel Research, Seattle, 2004.