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The fuzzy felt ethnography—understanding the programming patterns of domestic appliances

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Abstract

In this paper, we discuss domestic appliance use based on an ethnographic study of nine households. Specifically, we look at which domestic appliances users choose to “program”, and break them into two categories for analysis; those that allow users to program actions for the future and those that allow for macro creation to make repeated tasks easier. We also look at domestic programming habits based on gender.

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Notes

  1. Two of the authors have previously worked in the consumer electronic industry where this demographic is found to be typical for the “early adopter” market.

  2. At no point was the word “programming” used in the experimenter’s script.

  3. Some appliances were identified by participants as having both “repeats easy” and “ahead of time” functions. When a participant wanted to discuss an appliance with “ahead of time” functions that had already been placed on the “repeats easy” section, they simply moved the icon from one section of the board to the other, after the board had been photographed with their selected “repeats easy” icons.

  4. We describe our data in terms of households, appliance types and individual participants. Because of the fairly small number of individuals and households involved in the study, we have simply aimed to describe our findings, rather than to treat our sample as representative of any larger population. Thus, we do not assume that, for instance, the behavior of men and women in our sample necessarily generalize to any particular larger population of households. Therefore, we have not performed any statistical tests. We have given means and ranges where these are an effective way of summarizing our data, but we do not assume that our data is normally distributed.

  5. Although we recorded all the electrical and electronic appliances that our participants mentioned, we have excluded some appliances from our count of number of appliances per household. Appliances, which might be considered as part of the fixtures and fittings of the house, were not always mentioned, and so, were not always recorded consistently. For this reason, our count excluded power showers, extractor fans and heating systems. We also omitted power tools, garden tools and car appliances, because not all participants were comfortable with showing us the garage, and not being in the same room introduced variability in recalling appliances. However, where participants revealed useful information about programming these appliances, we have included that data in the discussion below. We counted fridge/freezers, washer/dryers, TVs with integrated VCRs, PCs with peripherals including printers and multi-part stereos each as one item. We included appliances that were unique to only one household but also reported these idiosyncratic appliances separately.

  6. Although we did not include hot-water heaters or heating controls in our count of numbers of appliances per household because of their anomalous status as fixtures and fittings, we were still interested in their programmable features. Again, although we excluded car appliances from our appliance count because of variability in how they were recorded, where participants discussed programmable features, for instance of car radios, their responses were of interest. We have, therefore, included these items in some of our graphs and discussion.

  7. These two households were the ones with the largest numbers of appliances reported overall (household #6 reported 55 appliances and household #7 reported 50). It appears that the discrepancy between the numbers of programmable appliances reported by these two men and their partners was at least partly due to the fact that the men in both households each reported a larger number of appliances than their partners in total. In household #6, the male participant reported three stereos, which the female participant did not report, and also mentioned the separate tumble dryer, while the female participant only reported the washing machine. In household #7, the male participant mentioned a video camera, a DVD player, an extra fridge–freezer and two mobile phones, which his partner failed to report. These differences do not cover the whole of the discrepancy between the numbers of potentially programmable appliances reported by the male and female partners in these two households. We did have the impression that these two men were particularly enthusiastic about technology, while their partners were less so. It seems likely that these men both reported more appliances and remembered more programmable features of the appliances they reported than their partners because of their greater interest in technology.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Rachel Hewson for her feedback on the early stages of the felt board, Mark Stringer for his help in running sessions and Tim Harris and Jonathan Hardwick for providing feedback on the earlier drafts of this paper. We are especially indebted to Matthew Chalmers, as discussions with him helped to crystallize our recommendations for future appliance designs. We would also like to acknowledge our funding body, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council GR/R87482 “Cognitive Ergonomics for Ubiquitous Computing.”

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  1. University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, Cambridge, CB3 0FD, UK

    Jennifer A. Rode, Eleanor F. Toye & Alan F. Blackwell

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  1. Jennifer A. Rode
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  2. Eleanor F. Toye
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  3. Alan F. Blackwell
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Correspondence to Jennifer A. Rode.

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Rode, J.A., Toye, E.F. & Blackwell, A.F. The fuzzy felt ethnography—understanding the programming patterns of domestic appliances. Pers Ubiquit Comput 8, 161–176 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-004-0272-0

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