Passive Co-presence: Exploring How Peripheral Devices Connect People Over Distance
Hanieh Shakeri, Carman Neustaedter · 2024
When families live in the same home, they feel a sense of connection through the subtle, passive aspects of family life. Over distance, these passive aspects are hard to experience as most communication technologies support sharing conversations or activities. Using a co-design study, Research-Through-Design (RtD) methods, and a field deployment, I aim to explore the design of smart home technologies for passive co-presence over distance. The co-design study uncovered differences in the connection needs of emerging adults and their parents, and provided a set of design considerations including designing for the need for control and privacy, sharing multi-sensory environmental ambience, and supporting nostalgia and comfort. These findings guided an RtD exploration resulting in the design of two artifacts – the There Chair and Fragrance Frame. To understand the impact of integrating passive co-presence designs into the home, I plan to conduct a field deployment, which I describe in this work.