The Messaging Kettle: It’s IoTea time
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/aahcc.v1i1.21323Keywords:
Habituation, Elderly, Internet of Things, IntimateAbstract
It’s time to consider people in designing the Internet of Things (IoT). We demonstrate a working prototype of a Messaging Kettle. It is designed to facilitate asynchronous communication and enable a sense of presence between adult children and their older parents living remotely from them through the familiar comfort routine of boiling the kettle to make a cup of tea. Our goal is to offer a human centred critique of the Internet of Things, which has largely been conceived without consideration of the people who will use the things, and rather has traditionally moved from a technology oriented perspective. In the case of smart homes this approach has produced a wide array of projects focused on monitoring the habits of the elderly, recognizing anomalies and alerting the caregivers. In contrast we propose to focus on engagement and reciprocity, building on the rituals associated with habitually used and cherished objects. We conclude by revisiting the technology-oriented framework for the Internet of Things to include our observations on people’s perspectives on smart communicating objects.
References
Ashton, K. 2009. That “internet of things” thing. RFiD Journal. 22, 7 (2009), 97–114.
Atzori, L., Iera, A. and Morabito, G. 2010. The internet of things: A survey. Computer networks. (2010).
Brereton, M. 2013. Habituated Objects: Everyday Tangibles That Foster the Independent Living of an Elderly Woman. interactions. 20, 4 , 20–24.
Brereton, M., Soro, A., Vaisutis, K. and Roe, P. 2015. The Messaging Kettle: Prototyping Connection over a Distance Between Adult Children and Older Parents. Proc. of the 33rd ACM SIGCHI (New York, NY, USA, 2015), 713–716.
Gaul, S. and Ziefle, M. 2009. Smart Home Technologies: Insights into Generation-Specific Acceptance Motives. HCI and Usability for e- Inclusion SE - 22. A. Holzinger and K. Miesenberger, eds. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. 312–332.
Kleinberger, T., Becker, M., Ras, E., Holzinger, A. and Müller, P. 2007. Ambient Intelligence in Assisted Living: Enable Elderly People to Handle Future Interfaces. Universal Access in HCI. Ambient Interaction SE - 11. C. Stephanidis, ed. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. 103–112.
Koreshoff, T.L., Leong, T.W. and Robertson, T. 2013. Approaching a Human-centred Internet of Things. Proc 25th OzCHI Conference. ACM (New York, NY, USA, 2013), 363–366.
Vaisutis, K., Brereton, M., Robertson, T., Vetere, F., Durick, J., Nansen, B. and Buys, L. 2014. Invisible Connections: Investigating Older People’s Emotions and Social Relations Around Objects. Proc. CHI2014 ACM (New York, NY), 1937–1940.
