Can Interactive Systems Be Designed for Conviviality?
Marc N. Choueiri, Schuyler Duffy, Sanjay Guria, Conrad McCarthy, Pehuen Moure, Anagha Todalbagi, Yixiao Wang, Carlos Henrique Araujo de Aguiar, Keith Evan Green · 2018
Can interactive systems be designed for conviviality? A response in the affirmative comes in the form of two convivial tools, Helping Hand and Tilting Table, that empower individuals suffering limitations in reaching and dexterity. Our interdisciplinary team developed Helping Hand and Tilting Table as analogues to a home builder's power tools, but here advanced by mechatronics and transported to home and workplace. This paper presents the two tools in the context of routine, domestic and working tasks, speaks to their design and basic behaviors, and offers an overview of their formative user evaluation involving older adults as part of an iterative, human-centered design process. Helping Hand and Tilting Table serve as design exemplars of enabling technologies targeting people with limitations in performing everyday tasks. But more broadly, striving for conviviality is what this paper hopes to encourage in designers.