DOMESTIC TECHNOLOGIES OF THE FUTURE

Abstract

An overall goal of the Morphome project is to create design principles for domestic applications of proactive computing in a way that could support existing values of domestic life. During the first year of the project we studied meanings and understandings associated with domestic technologies and their roles in everyday life by applying the probes approach. The focus was on the material environment of the home as well as the social: important things and practices affecting cosiness, domestication of media technologies, and use routines of different kind of domestic devices. One purpose of the project is also to explore how emphatic design methods can be applied to produce understanding of people’s emotional relation to their domestic environment and dynamic use contexts of domestic media and technologies. The starting point was that proactive solutions applied in the homes have to meet high standards in aesthetic and social usability in order to become widely adopted and accepted by the people.

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