Designing for dynamic family structures
William Odom, John L Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi · 2010
While the HCI community has long investigated issues of designing for family and the home, very little attention has focused on the lives of divorced families and the ways in which interactive systems might be better designed to address the very real and growing issues they face. In this paper we present an overview of related research on divorce and families. We then report field evidence from 13 in depth interviews conducted with families of parents and children in joint custody situations, and unpack key emergent problems and tensions. We conclude with a discussion of the design implications and opportunities that give shape to how the HCI community may be able to have a positive effect on this set of potential users. The overarching goal of this research is to better understand how the HCI community might begin to approach designing for this alternative family.