Digital technologies and the emotional family

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Int. J. Human-Computer Studies 67 (2009) 204–214 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhcs

Digital technologies and the emotional family Patrick Olivier!, Jayne Wallace School of Computing Science, Culture Lab, King’s Walk, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK Received 6 February 2008; received in revised form 3 July 2008; accepted 11 September 2008 Available online 5 October 2008

Abstract We present an alternative view of family communication that foregrounds both the emotional lives of family members and that which is of personal significance to them. Through the reflections of our participants, and our design response to these, we have used the design of digital jewellery as a window on the family as an emotional entity. In doing so we escape conventional assumptions as to how technology might support family life, and instead propose alternative forms of technology that serve as acceptable sites for highly personalised and personally significant emotional statements. Two designs are presented, Traces and Blossom, which are both responses to the lives and personal accounts of our participants, and a challenge to the conventions of interaction design. By reflecting on our designs we identify and unpick assumptions as to the nature of the digital technology with a view to opening up a design space that places an emphasis on both the individual and the authentic character of our emotional lives. r 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Digital jewellery; Family technologies; Art practice

1. Introduction Digital technology is being woven into the very fabric of our lives, both occupying and shaping the world which we inhabit. Despite recent interest in experience centred design (McCarthy and Wright, 2004), researchers and practitioners in interaction design have been heavily influenced by the concerns of the workplace, leading to a preoccupation with the notion of the task. On the whole, designers operate under the working assumption that digital technologies are there to meet the information processing and communication challenges that arise in our lives (whether at home, work or elsewhere). Unlike the workplace, rather than information it is the personal that pervades family life, by which we mean our felt individual experience; both through the idiosyncratic daily rituals that make up family life and our emotional relationships. Indeed, the family offers us a particularly rich set of

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E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Olivier), [email protected] (J. Wallace). 1071-5819/$ - see front matter r 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2008.09.009

relationships by reference to which we can consider the place of digital technologies within our lives. By implication, designing for family life offers us an opportunity to critique many of the assumptions of digital design practice itself. The family is within the scope of everyone’s experience and the temporal and spatial scales of these relationships are wide ranging. The family is a collection of people, distributed in time and space, who have complex relationships of varying intimacy—relationships that are unique in character. Indeed, the family may be seen as a microcosm of our wider relationships, and even a cursory examination shows it to be laden with changeable connections, dynamics and balances. Such a view of the family suggests that attempts to design for the family in generic terms will be at best a limited, and at worst a fruitless exercise, as the generic family is no family at all. Instead we propose that by focusing on the idiosyncrasies within particular families, the daily rituals and behaviours may reveal more authentic opportunities to weave digital technologies and artefacts into our lives. That is, through forms and behaviour that attend to the fluid emotional reality of family life. Technologies that address family life in a meaningful manner have the chance to play

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a rich and valued role within our relationships and experiences. These concerns are echoed in historical debates as to the nature of the family. Family historians themselves have in recent decades sought to shift the emphasis of their inquiries to the ‘‘reconstruction of the multi-tiered reality’’ of personal family experience, that is, ‘‘human experience such as growing up, courting, getting married, bearing and rearing children, living in families, becoming old, and dying, from the perspective of those involved’’ (Hareven, 1991, p. 95). One important insight that we can gain from a historical perspective is that the structure of the family has not undergone the sort of dramatic change that is widely believed. Indeed, the modern family is not so different from that of a thousand years ago. Studies of 14th century manorial records found that over three-quarters of contracts evidenced the separate residence of two generations (Smith, 1979; Herlihy, 1985), thereby exploding the myth that industrialisation has destroyed the natural harmony of multigenerational extended families. Our approach echoes the concerns of family historians in seeking to explore the emotional aspects and memories of individuals (members of real families) and that which is of particular personal significance to them (see Section 2). Through their reflections, and our design response to these, we have sought to use interaction design as a window on the family as an emotional entity. Inevitably, such an exercise needs to escape preconceptions as to the conventional form and place of technology in our lives. That is, we need a means to escape the assumptions as to how technology might support family life and instead propose interventions that are acceptable sites for highly personalised and personally significant emotional statements (see Section 3). As a result our designs (see Sections 4.1 and 4.2) challenge assumptions as to the nature of digital technologies themselves. By reflecting on our designs we identify and unpick assumptions as to the nature of digital technology, with a view to opening a design space for the use of technology to support people’s wider emotional needs (see Section 5). 2. Views of the family 2.1. Functional views of the family Existing approaches to designing for the family are in part rooted in conceptions of the family as a legal entity, that is, in terms of roles, responsibilities and obligations family members have, both to each other and to the wider society. In Western societies statutory characterisations of membership foreground genetic and legal relations and impose a network of obligations and expectations between the state, parents, children and the wider community. These vary from custody (i.e. living arrangements and access), to physical well-being, the maintenance of standards of behaviour (e.g. school attendance of children), financial benefits (e.g. child support and tax allowances),

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and death, where genetic and marital relations determine both responsibility for burial of the deceased and the allotment of any inheritance. The legal view of the family promotes actual and implied contracts between members, at the heart of which (in western society) are the duties of parents and their responsibilities towards their children. Moreover, statutory frameworks and public policy generally aim to promote family life, and the family’s assurance that its members’ behaviour is to the greater good of society. In general terms, the interaction design and human— computer interaction communities have taken as a starting point these formal roles and obligations of family membership, and designed for an activity model of family life. From this perspective, families are functional units that work, eat, relax and partake in leisure activities, more or less together. The roles are clear cut though there is a shift in emphasis from statutory compliance to activities of daily living through which members’ responsibilities are realised. Thus on workday mornings it is a child’s responsibility to be ready at a certain time to get a lift (or the bus) to school, and parents must support and co-ordinate the early morning routine, involving the preparation of breakfast and lunches, checking that homework is done and taken to school, overseeing or dressing children, and preparing for the day ahead. Here we see the metaphor of the workplace applied to the home as the functional view refines the roles of family members, as principal and supporting actors, in the fulfilment of the activities of daily living. In this functional vein a recent body of work has sought to address the communication requirements of family members. This has included studies of calendar usage and collaboration within families (Hutchinson et al., 2002; Brush and Turner, 2005) for which the focus is ‘‘coordination whereby household members routinely manage communications coming into and going out of the home’’ (Crabtree and Rodden, 2004, p. 191). Similarly, studies and prototype evaluations of digital messaging systems, inspired by existing forms of communication in the home, have been conducted on a small scale (O’Hara et al., 2005; Swan and Taylor, 2005; Sellen et al., 2006). More interestingly, with respect to an emotional view of the family, the Tsunagari project was one of the earliest demonstrations of so-called ‘‘presence’’ and ‘‘awareness’’ technologies. By mapping motion detection in one dwelling to physical smaller scale motion in another, the aim was to strengthen the ‘‘the bond between family members living apart through small acts of daily life or ashared presence’’ (Itoh et al., 2002). Forging emotional communication through technology has been proposed in a number of other forms, notably the Casablanca study (Hindus et al., 2001) which connected two lamps in which the state of one was reflected in the other and the digital family portrait (Rowan and Mynatt, 2005) which provides a situated rendering of the activity of an older family member with a view to reassuring their family. Whilst reactions to these design often include their potential to be interpreted by

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users as monitoring technologies, they were proposed with a view to promoting connections rather than surveillance. We can also see in such approaches the beginnings of a subtle shift in awareness that in their homes users creatively accommodate and appropriate technological interventions (Taylor and Swan, 2005). In parallel to growing interest within computer science in presence technologies, elements of the design community have started to articulate critiques of the use of technology in the home, and the characterisation of home life as a ‘‘technical’’ problem (Waites, 1989). Dunne’s critique of the ‘‘human factors’’ approach is typical: when used in the home to mediate social relations, the conceptual models for efficient communication embodied in office equipment leave little room for the nuances and quirks on which communication outside the workplace relies so heavily (Dunne, 2005, pp. 2–3) yand more strongly still that: the most difficult challenges for designers of electronic objects now lie not in technical and semiotic functionality, where optimal levels of performance are already attainable, but in the realms of metaphysics, poetry and aesthetics, where little research has been carried out. (Dunne, 2005, p. 20). Our response to Dunne’s call to arms is to reconsider conceptions of the family. Rather than being a functional entity with a daily routine that allows its members to coordinate and communicate in the achievement individual and collective goals, we can think of the family as an affective unit, that is, first and foremost as a locale for personal relationships, emotional support and reflection, and a crucial reference point for our sense of self. 2.2. The family as an emotional unit In the lives of most people the family offers a thread of continuity to which we return at times of emotional need and distress. It is a place of security and sanctity from the outside world, both in literal (physical) terms, but also through its character as a place where our well-being is placed above that of others, where we may be forgiven, and where our membership is unquestioned. As such the family is often a reference point to which we look to establish our sense of self (worth). This sense of self develops through our relationships with other members, our place within the network and through our appreciation of both our uniqueness and sameness. As the principal site of our emotional development it is a place where we may experiment or simply be ourselves. The development of our sense of self is not only through our relationships with other living members, but through an understanding and empathy with our predecessors. Understanding how we came to be, accounts of lives before we were born, and stories of the family within and beyond living memory, all add to our understanding of ourselves

and our place in the world. We may seek to nurture qualities we see in other family members and use their behaviour as a model for our own. When we consider change in our lives we often think of the impact our plans will have on family members and are guided by this. As such the family can be a locus for our aspirations, as both an inspiration and yardstick for our future ambitions. As much as we gain an understanding of ourselves by looking to past family members, we may also take a stake in the future of our children and future generations of our family. We may save money and possessions for them, and collect things to pass on that capture the notion of continuity and relational connectivity, such that our lives and place in our family will be remembered by our descendants. Considering the family as an emotional unit yields a very different set of design issues. Even mundane activities such as a mealtime bring to light concerns not apparent under the functional view. To the functionalist the mealtime is a matter of physical well-being and communication, at which we eat to sustain ourselves and others, and which are convenient points in space and time to exchange information. Here roles are divided into the meal preparer, server and consumers, all engaged in an activity that requires planning, co-ordination and action on the part of all participants. By contrast the emotional view foregrounds the family coming together in an act of emotional support and co-action. Mealtimes are a point at which we accrue a sense of our place in the family: through our physical setting (e.g. our place at the table), our role in the ritual (e.g. who serves, our portion size, and who goes first). Through significant acts, such as being allowed to drink alcohol with a meal, our development as an adult is acknowledged. Mealtimes are where we learn how to behave, and when the mealtime is opened up to guests we collaborate in the presentation of our family to the external world. Even the notion of family membership needs to be revisited. Legal and genetic ties between members are still relevant, but even within the context of the nuclear family a raft of new players figure in the emotional view. Friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, lodgers and even pets take their place in the web of inter-personal relations. Absent and future members, and even those of previous generations, have a bearing on family life. Considering the family in this way reveals new opportunities to design for the enrichment of these subtle and complex aspects of both our sense of self and our relational connection with others. Whilst a functional (purely activity-based) model may provide the reassurance of clear goals that can addressed though the traditional application of technology, it fails to engage with the true richness of our experience of the world. 3. Digital jewellery and designing for personal significance The richness of experience revealed by the emotional view challenges designers to rethink many of the assumptions as to the place of digital technology in our lives and


the means by which we can engage people in the design process. Our approach is to first recognise and circumvent the limiting assumptions of both designers and users as to the nature of digital technologies, and second to embark on a process of design that involves intimate engagement with individuals in exploring both their experiences and the personal significance of their families to them. 3.1. Digital technologies The contexts of the technological interventions discussed so far are laden with assumptions as to their aesthetic and interaction qualities (both on the part of the designer and the users) that are rooted in our notion of the digital itself. Existing work on the development of communication technologies for the family mostly propose the appropriation of existing devices, digital picture frames, mobile phones and televisions, or the use of household objects as sites for digital analogues of conventional ways of passing messages (e.g. digital notebooks on fridges and microwaves). Though the applications proposed are generally innovative, the realisation is conventionally digital. This shapes both the design activities and users’ expectations. Crucially, the role of function is paramount; in simple terms the devices themselves ‘‘work’’, and their working helps us to complete some everyday task. The framing of family communication technologies includes senders (the creators of messages or real-time interactions), receivers (the recipients of the information), messages (the information content) and notifications (the acknowledgement that information has been sent or received). Even where an exchange is conducted over days (e.g. e-mail) transmission is immediate (or assumed to be). This model of direct and immediate communication scopes both the way we conceive communication technologies and our use of them. Another traditional contrast is between the device, and the content that resides on the device. There is only a transient significance to the physical form (the device) which is readily transferred from one device to the next, usually when we upgrade. These forms themselves have a prescriptive aesthetic rooted in product design interpretations of what a digital device looks like, and retro-futuristic interpretations of technological progress. Indeed the fastpaced developments in digital technologies are now shorthand for a perceived interpretation of what constitutes the future. Yet consumer digital devices merely represent elements of a consumer identity, the apex of which is a short-lived technological novelty: a moment of newness. The significance is therefore often impersonal and transferable to another object and the devices themselves become dismissible objects that can be easily read, rather than something that begs inventive interpretation from a viewer. Content (e.g. photographs, notes and even messages) is often highly personal, and accumulates over time. Consequently, there is a very different pace and texture to the way we ascribe meaning to content than to devices themselves. Our relationship with the content is of a much

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more personal nature. Of course, one may purposefully mark or ornament a device in an attempt to customise the form to be personally meaningful, yet in the fast paced cycle of consumption, iterations of new models flood the market and we are required to start again, hopefully enthused by our new gadget. Personalisation, or attempts to foster a sense of personal significance, is on the whole restricted to either the organisation of content, the contribution of the user in the creation of content, or the response of the interface to the content. Despite a continuous striving to find ways to enable users to personalise software (e.g. customisable interfaces) the physical form of a device is unchanging and does little to touch us. 3.2. Jewellery and digital jewellery The nature of consumer technology, and the cycle of its renewal, stands in stark contrast to the place that many personal non-digital possessions have in people’s lives, and the personal meanings that are accrued over years. Our contention is that the pursuit of communication technologies to support the family as an emotional unit is best embarked upon without the use of recognisable digital technologies. Furthermore, rather than adopting a functional view of the family’s daily activities, we must address the problem of designing for the family as a set of personal experiences and relationships. To do this we invoke a particular genre of object, jewellery, that is often a site of personal meaning and significance. Jewellery is an intimate form of object. This arises firstly through a literal connection or relationship with the body. Jewellery is meant to be imagined on, or in an relationship with, a body. Even when not worn, or when considered unwearable, an intimate context remains. Secondly, jewellery has an intimate human-relational context; it is often situated in a relationship or as a locus for feelings relating to personally significant people, events, or parts of our histories. Examples of this in traditional jewellery include a wedding ring, a locket acting as a memento, or a piece of heirloom jewellery that we perhaps never wear, but that nevertheless has an intimate association with the previous owner, events when they wore the jewellery, and our feelings towards them. In contemporary jewellery, Memoria, by Lin Cheung (Fig. 1), exemplifies this thread of personal significance. Memoria (ear pins made up of many metal earring backs) is a piece made by Cheung following the death of her Mother. Cheung describes the piece by saying: Whilst sorting through her belongings, I came across several ear scrolls that did not belong to an earring. After putting her affairs in order, I gave the lost scrolls a meaning once more in the form of new jewellery. (Cheung, 2001, p. 25) Beyond our use of jewellery as a class of intimate object that is sited within human relationships, we are also



jewellery objects at a variety of temporal scales, returning again and again for reflection. By contrast, the cycle of renewal of digital technologies affords little opportunity to embed our experiences within them. Digital jewellery offers new scope for interaction design that allows us to explore both emotional aspects of our lives and our sense of self. 4. Designing for personal emotional significance

Fig. 1. Memoria, Lin Cheung (1999) (ear pins, silver and gold). Image courtesy of Lin Cheung.

concerned with the role and potential of digital technologies. Digital jewellery is the confluence of jewellery and digital technologies. This category of object is at the same time familiar (form) and unfamiliar (behaviour), and allows us to circumvent some very basic views we have of digital technologies, such as whether it works. By combining the notion of jewellery and digital technologies we can both extend contemporary jewellery practice and explore alternatives to the conventional application of technology in people’s lives. Beyond jewellery as a convenient site for embedding technology (Philips, 2000; Miner, 2003) there are only a few examples of attempts to use the digital medium within jewellery practice to explore personal relationships. One example is Nicole Gratiot Sto¨ber’s For Two Rings (Fig. 2). Gratiot Sto¨ber’s digital jewellery reacts to interactions between people, using sensors and light sources that illuminate when the forms are touched. The focus of the piece is human contact: relationships,and gestural, tactile connections. Gratiot (2004) describes this as: A series of works that make visible an exchange of that which is normally not seen. (Gratiot, 2004) The narrative structure of the pieces reflects a human encounter in the way the technology comes to life. The gesture of holding hands is amplified by the illumination of the jewellery. The pieces highlight the thrill of touch and also the potential embarrassment of the public display. Sto¨ber’s work offers a playful application of digital jewellery in human relationships. It stands as an early example of a contemporary jewellery object that has crossed the boundary into digital jewellery. Our experience of jewellery operates over a lifetime; they are objects people return to again and again for reflection and for a way to be transported to other times and places. As in our memories and personal relations, we experience

Our principal challenge is the creation of objects that will be more meaningful for people from the outset. Yet any approach that seeks to reduce experience to a generic set of needs or desires runs the risk of only attending to that which is the lowest common denominator of emotional significance. Instead, a design approach to digital jewellery that from the outset turns to individual experience facilitates a deeper exploration of familial relationships and personal significance. Through the exploration of an individual’s personal life we should be able to access a richer and more varied set of familial experiences and relational idiosyncrasies, including a desire to remember and reflect on past experience and to project into the future. With such an outlook we can address the family as something that incorporates both our memories of past members and our concern for future generations. We now present two pieces from Wallace’s (2007) doctoral research. Each piece was made for an individual participant, who Wallace got to know through the use of probe methods (Gaver et al., 1999) which are now widely used in human–computer interaction. As a design tool, probes emerged from interaction design (Gaver et al., 2004) and use creative processes inspired by fine art practice in the creation of objects to ask questions, using varied means, to discover inspirational information about a participant. Wallace designed probes that asked questions in relation to what a participant felt to be emotionally significant, not only at the moment of response, but also in relation to lived experience and hopes for the future. Each participant used the probes to respond in creative ways to share fragments of experiences from which Wallace made pieces that were given to each participant to live with and reflect upon. 4.1. Traces Made for Emma (fictional name) Traces centred on her relationship with her young daughter and her desire to always be there for her daughter if possible. A key factor in my1 conception of this piece was that, although a jeweller herself, Emma stated that she did not wear jewellery; though she was passionate about the medium and we had conversations about the role of traditional jewellery as a constant and valued referent in art jewellery. But the wearing of jewellery, particularly as an accessory, or daily adornment, was not something she felt comfortable with personally. Because of this I did not want to force the piece 1

Here ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘me’’ refer to Jayne Wallace, the contemporary jeweller.


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Fig. 2. For two rings, Nicole Gratiot Sto¨ber (1994) (magnets, stainless steel, perspex, LEDs with electronic components). Photographer Christoph Grnig. Image courtesy Daniel Gratiot.

to be wearable, I felt it was more appropriate to make something that she would feel comfortable with and that was jewellery-centric without having to be a wearable object. As such the piece became about jewellery and how it operates as heirlooms, something to pass on from generation to generation. That is, in the way that often we are given or bequeathed jewellery objects that are not our taste or style, yet the objects retain a connection to the giver; as things that were intimately related to them as objects they once wore or treasured as heirlooms themselves. The piece was made to describe components of a jewellery case in the form of a porcelain pearl, a series of porcelain clasps and a piece of velvet fabric (Fig. 3). Each object was a physical description of the objects they represented. The velvet for example was laser cut and scorched to describe the inside of a traditional necklace case, showing the contours, folds and hinges, as etched lines in the velvet. The materials I used had a particular significance. From Emma’s comments about the feel of her daughter’s skin I searched for materials that could reflect this. Polished porcelain and velvet seemed to echo the tactility of flesh in different ways; velvet is soft and warms and the porcelain is firm, smooth and cool to the touch. There were also many references to fabric objects by Emma, and the use of fabric in the piece seemed to reflect the comfortable home-centred context of many of her stimuli responses.2 In addition, Emma seemed to be someone who was keen to impart her knowledge, she was very vocal; the significance of words and voices were mentioned in her responses many times 2 See Wallace’s (2007) doctoral thesis for a full description of the design process including the use of stimuli, and a detailed description of participant responses.

and I made the piece to reflect this aspect. I wanted the piece to be something largely empty for Emma to fill, something driven by her input, based around capturing voices and sharing stories and knowledge, and something for her and her daughter to share. The idea of using fabric in part of the piece fed into my ideas of objects that were digitally absorbent; able to capture elements of their surroundings or to somehow absorb pieces of passing events. Each porcelain piece was made individually by methods of impressing the porcelain into moulds or imprinting shapes into it. These methods each echoed the idea of the piece centring on impressions or traces of absorbed experience. Each clasp differed subtly from the rest, yet collectively they appeared to be anonymous; a quality that extended to the identification of each piece once recorded. Traditional connotations of antique and conventional jewellery (i.e. old jewellery case, pearl and clasp) acted as a setting for a piece that could capture fragments of sound or speech. I hoped this would echo how heirloom objects retain aspects of their owners through the marks or wear and tear embedded within the object. The separate components of the piece act together to make a recording possible. Fig. 4 shows how placing the pearl on the velvet turned the pieces on, then by placing a fresh clasp on the velvet the piece began to record. As speech or other sound is recorded it was associated to that particular clasp. When the clasp was removed from the velvet the recording was completed. If or when the same clasp was replaced on the velvet at any future point the piece would always play the recording associated with it. The placement of the pieces on the velvet as the activator of the recording or playing of the sounds was an important, gentle way of interacting, a manner similar to exploring heirlooms in a jewellery box. Unlike



Fig. 3. Traces (form), Jayne Wallace.

Fig. 4. Traces (behaviour), Jayne Wallace.

most recording devices each clasp could only be used in a recording once, and could not be re-recorded or amended. The concept was the capture of speech or sound rather than recording pre-planned perfect messages. The objects acted as blanks onto which something fleeting could be caught. I felt the piece could potentially be a way to capture the beauty in everyday experiences, traces of existence, and to reflect Emma’s wish to always ‘‘be there, in person if possible’’ for her daughter. The objects are ways of passing on thoughts and moments of experience. The piece and a 3 min film showing its capacity to record sound were given to Emma for a period of approximately a month during which time she made note of her feelings towards the piece. I sought not to give information regarding my own design intentions or aspirations regarding the piece as I wanted to leave the space open for Emma’s own responses. After a month with the piece I met with Emma to discuss her responses and feelings and the following quotes are from her at this time: yit’s like a documentary process yrecording the real kind of reality of things ywhat’s also really quite nice about them, that is the similarity but difference between all of the pieces taking this as a family you know thing, a way of recording

people and then being able to play them back and being able to pass that on yyou might not know who you were about to listen to it would be really interesting in the same way that you go through a photo album and you point out to people ‘ooh that’s your great aunt such and such’ you could take one of these, put it down and hear her voice er, and somebody in the room would know who it was and other people might not and that would be really quite interesting and you might start to kind of, because they’re slightly different, you might start to connect certain ones and you would vaguely know who you were getting with each one but not necessarily there is something there even if I can’t see it that helps me connect with them and maybe it’s one of those things and particular to the fact that I’m a jeweller in that I couldn’t ever see myself wearing them as pieces of jewellery, but I can completely see myself as using them as something else yand them being part of me yI could have completely have imagined buying them, so there’s definitely a way in which these have been made for me even though I can’t quite see directly how y Emma’s comments reveal several interesting aspects. There were many possible ways as to how the piece could be used


and the reasons for this. Emma interpreted the piece as a kind of documentary process of capturing the reality of family events, this was how she gave it meaning and a role. In this way the ascribing of a function by me was unnecessary. She easily found a place for it within family life and although I think it was evident to her, from what she had shared with me, that I had made it for her and her daughter she extended this to include the wider family membership and even to have a relevance regarding past family members over time. She imagined it being used at family gatherings to capture them talking and being together, and as something to listen to as a family, through which she imagined anecdotal commentary being conducted when the voices of certain family members could be heard. She also interpreted it as something to pass on; this was something I had considered in my design, but something that was not explicitly presented or mentioned to her. In this way even though the objects involved digital technologies she perceived them to span generations, and to be used, shared and passed on over a long period of time. The uncertainty of not knowing whom you were going to hear was intriguing to her rather than frustrating; suggesting that the ability to predict the outcome of interactions is not necessarily a shortcoming. Here the randomness of sounds or voices listened to is described as fascinating and playful. Interestingly, Emma identified herself in the pieces, but could not articulate the source of this: she could see herself buying them and being drawn to them. This self-recognition exemplifies how a literal interpretation of a participant in the design process is not necessary to foster a strong connection with the piece. An empathic design approach that was sensitive to her relationships and sensibilities enabled me to interpret them into another form in which she saw herself. The visceral, tacit and implicit are essential qualities in what you feel from the responses someone shares with you. 4.2. Blossom Blossom (Fig. 5) is made from wood, glass, silver and vintage postage stamps. Made for Ana (fictional name) it is

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a piece that is worn cupped in the hand, allowing the silver form to sit between your fingers. It is not a piece made to be worn as accessory, as denoted by the purposeful manner in which the piece is worn; it is a piece to wear when you have the time to reflect and contemplate the experiences, meanings and human relationships it reflects. The form and digital potential of the piece refer to Ana’s precious relationships with her grandmothers, and connections to family and family land in Cyprus. Ana’s family is GreekCypriot and although British herself Ana’s connections with Cyprus, the culture, family members and their land there, has always been key to her sense of self. In her responses she mentioned her relationships with her two grandmothers many times. One grandmother had moved to the UK and helped to raise Ana. Her other grandmother remained in Cyprus, but was a strong force in Ana’s life. Although both grandmothers were now dead, Ana described their influence on her life as ongoing. Ana described her love of plants and flowers, and her ability to grow them as something she felt she had absorbed from one grandmother. She had photographed an icon that her other grandmother had given to her as a child and she carried this with her every day as a talisman. These symbolic referents were elements I wanted to weave into the piece as well as a distinctive word, nourishing that Ana repeatedly used to describe her relationship with her grandmothers. I sought to make a piece that felt contemplative, organic, and had strong connections to growth and family land. At the heart of the jewellery piece is a structure holding vintage Cypriot postage stamps. The stamps date from the years when Ana’s grandmothers lived in Cyprus and had been franked and sent on letters from Cyprus to the UK. Printed on the reverse of the stamps is the photograph Ana took of her icon. The authenticity of the stamps was of great importance as a physical connection to both geographies; objects that had travelled between these two places, which in turn echoed my intention to digitally connect both places through the piece. The jewellery object, residing with Ana in London, would be connected to a rain sensor, planted on Ana’s family land in Cyprus. The old Cypriot postage stamps,

Fig. 5. Blossom (form), Jayne Wallace.



Fig. 6. Blossom (behaviour), Jayne Wallace.

closed like the petals of a flower inside the glass dome, are attached to a mechanism, waiting to receive a signal sent initially from the rain sensor. Once the rain sensor had registered a certain quantity of rain in Cyprus, which would take an indeterminate amount of time; months or even years, a signal would be sent to the jewellery object and the mechanism would be activated; slowly opening the postage stamp petals like a flower blossoming. In this way the jewellery is nourished by rainwater falling on the family land and blossoms in response (Fig. 6), but only once. As with Emma and Traces, Ana lived with Blossom for a month after which she reflected on the piece and the significance it held for her: I just thought it was very poignant ylife affirming in that it was about the sort of preciousness of life for me and that you only live it oncey I suppose its purpose to me is that it reminds you of the smaller things in life it could help you to just take stock and stop and look at things y ywhen it blossomed, it kind of upset me that it was only the once, and I thought ‘oh my god!’ (laughs) but yif it wasn’t only once then that would defeat the object, of your piece I think yfor me anyway yI mean that was a kind of crucial point for me, when I started blubbing (laughs) when it said it ‘only blossoms once’ and I was just like ‘oh!’, ‘yeah!’ and it, I sort of got it, that it was sort of, represented life really and that, erm, you only live it once y I think you’ve touched on something, (laughs) quite, yeah, big really y‘planted on family land’ ya kind of permanence to it and a rooting for me ywhich links to strong emotional family ties y

ymy longing really to have somewhere that I can call home and I guess when my house, our old house in [Cyprus] got sold I felt very uprooted and very insecure in a way yI think that’s kind of what my Mum’s house in Cyprus represents now because it’s like on family land ya kind of rooting yand a kind of permanence ystability y yalthough it blossoms only once yif your family aren’t all together that they’ve got time to come together and it could be to get people together for a meal, but it’s like a little indicator to say come on everybody come over Ana’s responses reveal the ease with which she could interpret the piece as relating to her family and see Blossom as a signifier of both the fleeting quality and preciousness of life and our connections with those we love. The piece had poignancy for her and provided a route to a different pace in life where she could slow down or stop and reflect on the small things, to ‘‘take stock’’ of things to be appreciated. For Ana this was the purpose of the object, and a valuable addition to her life. That the blossom would only occur once was described by her as ‘‘crucial’’ and this element had deep emotional meaning for her. Indeed, an interaction that occurred once was regarded by Ana as the essence of the piece. The twig, the blossoming, and the concept that part of the piece would be planted on family land, resonated with Ana’s feelings of family and her longing for a family home. In aspiration, Blossom offers a sense of the permanence, rootedness, and stability that family can represent, and which is called into question when a family is literally divided through emigration. Ana imagined how she would interpret the meaning of the blossoming: for her Blossom was so entwined with her idea of family, and appreciating the things in life that are meaningful to her, that when the


piece finally blossomed she might think of it as an indicator for family members to get together and celebrate their family. 5. Reflections: unpicking the digital Designing for the emotional family, exploring and responding to Emma and Ana’s accounts of the personal emotional significance of their families, has yielded unfamiliar digital objects. Traces and Blossom are meant to be more than just exemplars of sensitive design responses to the emotional concerns of individuals, but as the beginning of a critique of assumptions as to the very nature of digital technologies. Traces is a home-centred highly personal object that is left open to interpretation and as such has no specific function or purpose. It is a response to the particular relationship between a mother and child but leaves the space of possible interactions open for the family to make their own. In direct contrast to digital conventions of content organisation, Traces promotes a sense of uncertainty and exploration, and causes Emma to wonder which voices or recording she will hear when she places a particular clasp onto the velvet. Traces requires the user to cede control affording them only a single chance to record on a clasp. Re-recording is rendered irrelevant, as a fragment of reality, warts and all, is captured. The piece has both fragility, through its ability to capture only one moment in time, and longevity, as Emma readily anticipates passing it on as an heirloom to her daughter and beyond. Similarly, Blossom makes no commitment as to its use, but through reference to Ana’s family and personal geographies, is imbued with emotional significance to her. The fleeting uniqueness of the act of blossoming echoes aspects of our relational experiences, yet this is realised through Ana’s anticipation of the blossoming, that is, only the potential for an interaction to occur. Although the blossoming occurs once the piece is permanently connected to the land in Cyprus and this location is valued as meaningful to the family. The piece does afford a form of communication; it connects two geographies and factions of a family through both this permanent connection and through the response of a flower blossoming because rainwater falling on the family land in Cyprus has nourished the piece. For Ana it is this potential to blossom, and blossom only once that is significant. Thus Blossom calls for patience over a period that could last for years, and an enduring character through the retained context of family members connected over separate geographies, and including past generations. Both of these pieces relate in an intimate way to the family. The insights to family life that led to them and the possibilities presented for digital technologies within these personal environments would not have arisen from an outlook that focussed on the tasks inherent to family life. Key characterisations regarding the qualities of the digital have been made within these

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practice-based explorations that seek to offer a fresh perspective of what digital can mean for us through a design of a new texture and pace of interaction. If we are to reconsider the potential for digital technologies, in which they play a more emotionally meaningful role in the lives of people, then an unpicking of the digital is required. The viability of our digital jewellery pieces that serves to both highlight and unpick the qualities of the digital technologies. Through our reflections on the character of Blossom and Traces a number of assumptions as to the nature of current digital technologies have risen to the surface. Our expectation of the digital is as an intransient medium, with an unchanging quality that unlike physical counterparts does not degrade, age, fade or die. Our ability to replicate data and functionality democratises, and yet diminishes, our experience of technology. As we share and create copies and back-ups, the preciousness, identity, and significance of the original dissipates. We can repeat, redo, and remake with the digital, but we rarely think of it as something momentary and fleeting—something unique that is never to be repeated. Our encounters with technology have an immediacy, emphasising high speed access, fast paced interactions and system responses. Digital devices are increasingly required to function ubiquitously in time and space, with a behaviour that is set; a deterministic character that is entirely predictable, unsurprising and closed to interpretation. If we take Blossom and Traces as alternatives, and hold them up to our current expectations of the digital we see that the notion of digital technology as predictable, immediate, disposable and ubiquitous, gives way to feelings of fragility and transience; qualities that are more delicate and perhaps more valuable because of this. This balance of qualities offers an alternative design space for digital technologies. The finite, fragile qualities of the real world may cause us frustration at times, but an empathy for the fragile also enables us to value fleeting moments and experiences that linger if only for a short time. Re-assessing our expectations of the immediacy of digital experience has the potential to change the pace of our interactions with, and reflections on, objects, and by ceding control of an interaction we open ourselves to experiences such as anticipation and surprise. Likewise, if aspects of digital technologies and digital media were not easily replicable and repeatable our attribution of value to it would change. As in Blossom and Traces, digital events and interactions that occur only once, or rarely, might be more readily valued as something precious and vital. Similarly, unspecified behaviours of the digital may bring a random aspect to our interactions and an unpredictability, which would allow us to side-step the current conceptual limitations of consumer digital technologies and create interaction spaces that are open to interpretation. Rather than limiting ubiquity, if we designed with a sense of a more varied pace of accessibility and a more imaginative conception of the blurring between the private and public



aspects of our interactions then again the scope for design becomes less obvious and more flexible. We presented digital jewellery as a useful vehicle for explorations of a different characterisation of the digital for two reasons. Firstly, being that we do not yet have firm expectations of digital jewellery as it is in essence a new category of object. Secondly, being that jewellery is a category of object that is centred on meaningful relationships between people it can act as a personal conduit to other times, people and experiences. Digital jewellery is thus a valuable category of object through which to design fresh digital interactions that challenge existing assumptions. This is possible to achieve for wider aspects of digital culture too. With respect to the family we reason that if designers unpick the expectations and assumptions of the categories of objects and forms of technologies that they seek to design then they can use the emotional family and what this implies as a filter through which they can reconsider the potentials of digital technologies. The family is a wonderful example of a rich and complex set of interwoven relationships that is perfectly situated to be the stimulus for fresh conceptions of the role and potential of the digital. We hope that the initial critique of the digital that we have offered, along with the characterisation of the family as an emotional unit, and our examples of design that consider the idiosyncratic and personally meaningful nature of the family, may serve as catalysts for others to unpick current limiting assumptions of the digital and to make way for more open and varied design interpretations of the digital. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Lin Cheung and Daniel Gratiot for their kind permission to use images within this paper. References Brush, A.B., Turner, T.C., 2005. A survey of personal and household scheduling. In: Proceedings of the International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, pp. 330–331. Cheung, L., 2001. Marzee Gallery catalogue. 8 April–30 May. Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., 2004. Domestic routines and design for the home. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 13 (2), 191–220. Dunne, A., 2005. Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design. MIT Press, Cambridge.

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