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1.

ICT-applications as tools for flexile everyday life - methodological considerations for making ICT-related activities seen in everyday life

Authors: Kajsa Ellegård and Elin Wihlborg

Abstract: Globalization and other trends in today's society claim for more flexibility in time and space, in working life and private life. At the same time information and communication technologies (ICT) offers opportunities to its realization. Boarders between activities made for paid work and activities performed for other purposes are dissolved by increased use of different ICT-tools. For example, a private cell-phone in your pocket gives friends and family access to you almost wherever you are, even at the workplace. New applications such as SMS and set top boxes open for new activity patterns.

The aim of this paper is to present a method to investigate how and why ICT-applications are integrated in everyday life and to give examples of analysing ICT-use. The discussion is based on preliminary results from our ongoing research. The methods common to our research projects emanate from the time-geographic approach. We use time-diaries and in-depth interviews. In the time-diaries informants are asked to include all activities they perform, with emphasis on activities related to their use of ICT. The diaries are analyzed in a specific computer program, to create illustrative maps of the activities. Illustrations drawn for each individual in the households are our ground for follow-up in-depths interviews. From these solid and multi-dimensional descriptions of ICT-use in everyday life many important research questions on ICT penetration of daily life can be raised.

2.

Everyday Artefacts- Challenges and Opportunities for HCI

Authors: Marianne Graves Petersen

Abstract: Taking two cases of long-term use of Bang & Olufson (B&O) TV as a starting point, the paper discusses how the move of interactive technology into our everyday lives challenges existing HCI theories and practices. It pushes ahead a number of questions, such as: How do we understand the nature of human action, when relaxation in front of the television forms part of the motive of use? How do people learn to use the ever-changing technologies when training is not an opportunity? What are the consequences of a domestic setting for understanding use and designing for use? Is transparency a design ideal in this case? Based on experiences from a long-term study of B&O TV use it suggests that understanding and evaluating the use of everyday artefacts is a matter of

* understanding how they support shifting degrees of attention

* focusing on how they support learning in use through their designs and contexts

* investigating the biography and history of everyday artefacts in concrete situations of use. This implies identifying means for investigating domestic technology use in the case of household technologies

* understanding how everyday artefacts do not fit seamlessly into existing practices but also change and transform practice in a non-transparent way

Based on the experiences from the case studies as well as a theoretical framework of learning artefacts the issues above are exemplified, discussed, and principles are developed to address these issues in HCI evaluation and design. The paper wraps up suggesting the concept of everyday artefact as a framework for broadening our concerns for usability of the emerging new technologies in new contexts. The framework further provides a context for a methodological toolbox for understanding and designing everyday artefacts.

3.

Smart Appliances for Community Medicine

Authors: Gloria Brown Simmons

Abstract: The Center for Reflective Community Practice (CRCP), Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), MIT, has begun to plan a project for collecting data relevant to the study of air pollution and asthma. The CRCP would like to develop the project in such a way that residents and scientists will have long term benefits from the process and information.

The project is part of a larger, on-going, community development program with the Springfield, Massachusetts, North End community. CRCP works with the North End to foster a development effort organized around residents taking leadership roles to build supportive human, information and technological infrastructures needed in order to improve the quality of life for all community members.

The Environmental Mitigation: Asthma Project developed as a result of several independent activities finding common interest in the need for local atmospheric data and data associated with asthma. At first take, the project may seem to be a simple one - to develop a seamless system for scientists, medical professionals and the lay public focused on air pollution and asthma, but, the project requires a group of diverse activities all designed to interconnect several "contextual" axes.

The development of useful methods (information appliances) through which residents will contribute and access environmental data in their homes and neighborhoods offer an additional benefit to the community at large. Emerging technologies will be investigated for the development of the home systems and new forms of "interactive information appliances" will be developed. These interactive devices, continuously updated, supported by relational databases for time-correlated individualized personal data, localized environmental data, neighborhood air quality measurements, and regional atmospheric data will enable advances in asthma research, education, and health care.