[ecrea] CfP: CHI 2013 Workshop on Studying Technology in the Home

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) 
<mailto:(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.