Call for Participation: METHODS FOR STUDYING TECHNOLOGY IN THE HOME A workshop to be held as part of ACM CHI 2013. April 27th, 2013. Palais de Congrès, Paris, France. Position Papers due: January 11th, 2013. ----------- CONTACT Website: http://studyingthehome.wp.horizon.ac.uk/ Please email us with any queries or ideas at: studyingthehome@gmail.com ----------- OVERVIEW This workshop will explore the methods used to study our interactions with technology in home contexts. We will share practices, identify key issues and potential for innovations in this space. Technology is becoming ever more integral to our home lives, and visions such as ubiquitous computing, smart technologies and the Internet of Things represent a further stage of this development. However studying interactions and experiences in the home, and drawing understanding from this to inform design, is a substantial challenge for many researchers in Human-Computer Interaction and other disciplines. In collecting data, understanding current practices, and evaluating potential designs, researchers need to consider a range of specific issues, such as domestication processes and intrusiveness. We also need to understand how varied relationships, activities, objects and physical spaces constitute our individual home lives. New technologies present opportunities for further data to be collected in home environments, but require a deep understanding of issues specific to home life. This workshop will bring together a cross-disciplinary group of researchers with experiences of researching technology in the home, in order to map the space of methods in use, identify connections, tensions and gaps, and explore the potential for further innovation to meet the challenges we face. Together we will develop a coherent understanding of this methodological space, and identify connections and gaps, where further development of methods can occur to overcome issues specific to studying the home. ----------- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION We invite you to submit a 2-4 page position paper, based on your interests and experiences with studying technology in the home. This paper should outline a method that you have used in your research, and critically reflect on the application of this method to a study related to the home. It should then highlight the particular challenges faced, how the method used was, or could be, combined with other approaches, and how it could be further refined. We invite contributions from researchers working in areas including, but not restricted to: -Ethnographic or observational studies in homes, including dormitories and shared buildings -Approaches to exploring design through narratives, e.g. scenarios or user enactments -Prototype design and evaluation studies using field trials in homes, lab studies and smart home demonstrators built for research purposes -Living Lab and action research approaches to innovation related to the home -Automated approaches to capturing or analysing quantitative data about activities in the home -Application areas such as medical, assistive and e-health technologies, media and entertainment, smart appliances, smart grids, behaviour change, technologies for families, children and the elderly, home automation and many others where the home is a key context of use. In particular, we invite submissions which explore this space from an interdisciplinary perspective, and consider how the research areas above are combined in research projects. For example how ethnographic methods can be used in conjunction with creative design processes, or how qualitative understanding can be used in conjunction with quantitative data collected from sensors and logs of activity around the home. Submissions due: January 11th 2013. Notifications: February 8th 2013. ----------- ORGANISERS Tim Coughlan, Michael Brown & Sarah Martindale, University of Nottingham, UK. Rob Comber & Thomas Ploetz, Newcastle University, UK. Kerstin Leder Mackley & Val Mitchell, Loughborough University, UK. Sharon Baurley, Brunel University, UK.