Abstract
In this paper we outline some research we have
conducted in family homes that has led us to place emphasis upon the ways in
which to make computing ‘disappear’ it is necessary first of all to make it
‘unremarkable’. We detail two instances
that we found particularly illuminating in this respect and discuss the ways in
which they pre-eminently unremarkable.
Out of this we make some tentative observations about the implications
of that for the design of future technologies for the home.
Keywords
Ubiquitous Computing, The
Disappearing Computer, Ethnography, Domestic Technology, Augmentation
INTRODUCTION
Many recent
initiatives, ideas, and research agendas have been focused upon ways in which
to have technology increasingly ‘disappear’ from sight and become embedded within
other artefacts that retain the computing power whilst losing the appearance of
a computer. Examples in this arena
abound, ranging from Mark Weiser’s early notion of ‘invisible in use’[8],
through notions such as calm computing [9], ubiquitous computing [7], and the
computational augmentation of everyday artefacts [4], and to ongoing exercises
such as the EC’s Disappearing Computer initiative [2].
In a totally different
vein of interest social scientists studying people’s engagement with technology
have recurrently confirmed an observation first offered by Harvey Sacks in the
early 1970s:
“This technical apparatus is, then, being made at home with the rest of our world. And that’s a thing that’s routinely being done, and it’s the source for the failures of technocratic dreams that if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed. Where what happens it that the object is made at home in the world that has whatever organization it already has” ([6] 548-9).
Much of the research
implicated in the above perspectives has been conducted in work settings rather
than home settings. However, it is
clear that in environments where rationales of productivity and efficiency are
not at the fore, and where aesthetic configuration is given considerably
greater emphasis, how technology looks, where it is placed, how ‘visible’ or
‘invisible’ it is, how to hand it is, and how much work it takes to make it
work [1], are all clearly significant.
Furthermore, they are unlikely to be significant in the same ways as
they are for workplace technologies.
But what does it take for a computer to ‘disappear’? And how do
technologies get ‘made at home’?
BACKGROUND
Under the auspices of
an EC-funded project (called MiME [5]) in the Disappearing Computer initiative
we conducted several ethnographic studies of family life during the summer of
2001. These were fully-fledged
ethnographies with the researcher spending long periods in the family home shadowing
the activities of family members and recording them for subsequent
analysis. The aim was to capture as
much as possible, without pre-supposition about what might or might not be of
interest, and there was certainly no emphasis placed upon how people interacted
with and around any particular set of technologies. Instead we wanted to understand family life as best we could from
the point of view of those living within the family, and to arrive at a point
where we could comprehend their own, in situ logics and rationales.
Although we therefore
did not set out with the above questions informing the conduct of our research
it became apparent to us as we analysed aspects of the data that some of our
observations were able to speak to such interests. In particular we found reflections upon the way people actually
accomplish routines to be significant in this respect, although the import is
broader.
THE UNREMARKABLE IN ACTION
To cut to the chase
let us say that one of the prime ways in which things may be ‘lost to view’ and
‘made at home’ is through the orientation people adopt to them as unremarkable. That is, it is less a perceptual matter
(though we wouldn’t want to utterly deny the importance of that in some
respects) and more a matter of orientation. In everyday life there are innumerable things that we engage
with, that we do, that other people do, that we never trouble to concern
ourselves with or pass comment upon.
Everyone just gets on with doing them as though they were the most
‘natural’ thing in the world. That is,
in the course of whatever they are doing, people find these things naturally
accountable [3] – they require no special account for why things are done
that way or look that way and would never normally think to provide some
account for them. And it is in just
such circumstances that things are most ‘invisible’, ‘unnoticed’, ‘ignored’,
‘not attended to’, or whatever, and most ‘made at home’.
We fell into these
reflections in the context of observing routines because some of the things we
were seeing were at first sight particularly remarkable to us, yet utterly
unremarkable to those who were engaged in their realisation. For instance, in one family a mother and her
neighbour had arrived at a seemingly elaborate, yet beautifully simple and
obvious method for notifying one another of their imminent departure to school
to pick up their children, so that they could walk there together.
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Figure 1:
“That was good timing” |
The arrangement worked
in this way: Whoever was ready first
and out first knocked on the door of the other, but didn’t wait for a reply.
Instead they just slowly started to walk up the road. The other mother whose door had been knocked on similarly opened
the door a crack to acknowledge the fact they had heard it, but didn’t
necessarily leave immediately but rather gathered together their bits and
pieces to get ready to go to the school.
Then they walked out and caught up with their neighbour. We inhabit a world where our usual
understanding of what happens when someone knocks on a door is that they wait for
an answer and the person inside opens the door to see who is there. In this case those expectations were
thoroughly transcended and to us, at first sight, quite remarkable. Yet for the two mothers this was a thing
they did every school day, never paused to comment upon, and that was eminently
logical. But it was not a thing that
they could engage in at just any time of day or on any day of the week. It was quite specifically unremarkable to
them within the context of their ‘going to school’ routine. So a refinement we need to note here is that
things are not by their nature naturally accountable or
unremarkable. Rather they are
unremarkable within some particular course of action. No-one comments upon them because they are grammatically appropriate. The full force of this was brought home to
us when, on one occasion, they both exited from their front doors at the same
time, thereby obviating the need for their messaging activity but only pausing
to comment thus: “that was good timing”, for it was, of course, that
coincidence of action that the knock on the door had evolved to support.
In another instance we
were observing a mother who was working at home early in the morning on her
computer. During the course of our
observations an alarm clock upstairs began to ring. Yet, despite this being something specifically remarkable to the
ethnographer witnessing it, the mother ignored the alarm and carried on working
on her computer, not even pausing in her keystrokes. Yet five minutes later she stopped work and went to the foot of
the stairs and called up to her children to check they were getting up. For her, once again, the actual device and
its audibility were wholly unremarkable.
Yet it served as a resource for bringing about subsequent things, such
as getting up and going to school. Once
more this is something that is situatedly sensible but, were it to happen at
another time, for instance in the middle of the morning once the children had
gone to school, it would cease to be grammatically appropriate and would
instead become something that she herself might well comment upon.
THE UNREMARKABLE AND DESIGN
We have, then, reached
a point where we are proposing that one of the most important things for any
technology to accomplish in the context of the household, if it is to be
genuinely ‘made at home’ and ‘invisible in use’, is that it be able to become
so completely appropriate within the grammar of some course of action that it
is utterly unremarkable. If it obliges
interaction with it such that you yourself are obliged to take specific note of
that interaction, or if your interaction with it is at all notable to others,
then it cannot really be said to have ‘disappeared’. So a device may not be literally ‘seeable’ yet, if it obliges you
to take pause mid-conversation and wave vigorously at your ceiling, then it is
every bit as remarkable as some chugging mainframe that occupies half of your
living room.
Design in such
circumstances is obviously challenging.
Yet clearly these observations do enable us to offer certain
insights. For instance, if we reflect
upon our first example of the knock on the door, there is a tangible artefact,
a door, and an action performed upon it, a knock. Yet to seek to support such things technologically purely on
those terms, for instance, most crudely, be trying to provide for a more
effective way of knocking, would be to completely miss the point. For it is clear within this example that the
knock on the door is an action that signifies. How one might then understand what one should augment
technologically rides, crucially, upon an understanding of what actions one is
augmenting, and where what one should augment is clearly the action and not
just the device.
Another point worthy,
perhaps, of reflection is that within the examples recounted above there are
certain nodal occurrences, such as the ringing of the alarm clock or the
knock upon the door, upon which the subsequent realisation of action might be
said to turn. It might then be the case
that a deeper understanding of such nodal moments and their grammatical
significance within some course of action might well offer something to the
design of ubiquitous computing. For
instance, might such moments be particularly useful to detect? And, if one is going to augment action, are
these the moments when augmentation might be most effectively realised? All of these are matters requiring
considerably more research and exploration of their implications but we would
argue that a proper understanding of how things come to be unremarkable in
action is important to any future debate.
CONCLUSION
We have in this
position paper noted a burgeoning interest in how technologies might be made to
‘disappear’ and become woven into the fabric of people’s lives. Our research has led us to put forward the
suggestion that understanding how people orient to things as unremarkable
is central to accomplishing any realisable ‘disappearance’ of technology. We have supported this with several examples
where the possibility for things to be unremarkable turns upon their placement
and implicativeness within some course of action. We have therefore argued that augmentation of devices should be
centred upon augmenting actions, and actions that are locally intelligible as
appropriate, rather than devices per se. Whilst this does not offer immediate design solutions we see it
as an important element in ongoing research across a range of initiatives and
in particular those that are increasingly coming to focus upon design for the
home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research was conducted
in part for the MIME Project (IST FET 2000 26360) in the EC’s Disappearing
Computing programme.
REFERENCES
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