Chapter 12
Working with Community Groups to Inform the Design of Domestic Technologies
HCI traditionally studies domestic computing with methods that focus on the inner workings of the home, such as family interviews or home visits. This approach yields rich results, but may inadvertently focus discussion on productive and positive aspects of family life such as cooperation, intimacy, and the everyday joys of family life. Insights from this approach can be augmented by looking outside of the home at the family’s relationship to the local community. Community support groups are places where the problems of family life “spill over” into a more public setting. By studying how people talk about their families in these settings, more nuanced insights into family life that surface tensions and individual concerns are revealed. I illustrate this by performing a secondary analysis of interviews with 19 bereaved participants who attended a local community-based support group. This analysis reveals that participants want to protect their families from outside scrutiny, but at the same time, are looking to the community to identify potential practices that could help to address their family’s issues. I conclude with lessons and challenges in using this research method, and design considerations that broaden the scope of issues we should consider in domestic computing.
