The Messaging Kettle: It’s IoTea time

We demonstrate a working prototype of a Messaging Kettle designed to facilitate asynchronous communication and enable a sense of presence between adult children and their older parents living abroad. Our goal is to offer a human centred critique of the Internet of Things, which has largely been conceived without consideration of the people who will use the things, and rather has traditionally moved from a technology oriented perspective. In the case of smart homes this approach has produced a wide array of projects focused on monitoring the habits of the elderly, recognizing anomalies and alerting the caregivers. In contrast we propose to focus on engagement and reciprocity, building on the rituals associated to habitually used and cherished objects. We conclude revisiting the technology oriented framework for the Internet of Things to include our observations on people’s perspective on smart communicating objects.

Towards an analysis framework of technology habituation by older users

Smart everyday objects could support the wellbeing, independent living and social connectedness of ageing people, but their successful adoption depends upon them fitting with their skills, values and goals. Many technologies fail in this respect. Our work is aimed at designs that engage older people by building on their individual affective attachment to habituated objects and leveraging, from a participatory design perspective, the creative process through which people continuously adapt their homes and tools to their own lifestyle. We contribute a novel analytic framework based on an analysis of related research on appropriation and habituated objects. It identifies steps in appropriation from inspection to performance and habituation. We test this framework with the preliminary testing of an augmented habituated object, a messaging kettle. While only used in one home so far, its daily use has provoked many thoughts, scenarios and projections about use by friends, both practical, utopian and dystopian.

Techno Teacher Moms: Web 2.0 Connecting Mothers in the Home Education Community

Home education is on the rise in Australia. However, unlike parents who choose mainstream schooling, these parents often lack the support of a wider community to help them on their educational and parenting journey. This support is especially lacking as many people in the wider community find the choice to home education confronting. As such, these parents may feel isolated and alienated in the general population as their choice to home educate is questioned at best, and ridiculed at worst. These parents often find sanctuary online in homeschool groups on Facebook. This chapter explores the ways that Facebook Groups are used by marginalized and disenfranchised families who home educate to meet with others who are likeminded and aligned with their beliefs and philosophies. It is through these groups that parents, in relation to schooling it is especially mothers, are able to ask for advice, to vent, to explore options and find connections that may be lacking in the wider community.