Intra-Family Mediated Awareness

The research presented examines how pervasive technology can support intra-family communication, supporting existing practices and complimenting them by addressing communication needs currently unmet by current communication media like mobile phones, social networking systems, and so forth. Specifically the investigation focused on busy families, understood here to be families with two working parents and at least one child sharing the same roof. The class of technologies the authors consider are awareness systems, defined as communication systems that support individuals to maintain, with low effort, a peripheral awareness of each other’s activities and whereabouts. This research combined a variety of research methods including interviews, web surveys, experience sampling, and field testing of functional prototypes of mobile awareness systems. It also involved the development of several applications, which were either seen as research tools in support of the methods applied or as prototypes of awareness systems that embody some of the envisioned characteristics of this emerging class of technologies. The contribution of this research is along two main dimensions. First in identifying intra-family communication needs that drive the adoption of awareness systems and second in providing directions for the design of such systems.