Using an intergenerational communications system as a 'light-weight' technology probe

Authors:
Geoff Langdale;Judy Kay;Bob Kummerfeld
Affiliations:
University of Sydney;University of Sydney;University of Sydney
Venue:
CHI '06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2006

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Abstract

A problem with the technology probe [1] approach is the substantial time required to gain results. For prototype technological systems, a further problem is the requirement that systems are deployed into non- technical end-user's homes, where they are comparatively hard to maintain. Even a robust system may be vulnerable to unavoidable problems in these kinds of environment (for example, bandwidth outages in a communications device). We introduce a light-weight procedure that sacrifices some of the realism associated with technology probes in favor of ease of deployment and speed of information gathering.We apply our methods to the "Keep in Touch" (KiT) intergenerational communications system, and describe some preliminary results that we have obtained.