The home workshop: a method for investigating the home

How families engage with their technologies in the home is important as there is an increasing interest being shown by manufacturers and researchers towards the home. The lessons from over twenty years research in Human-Computer Interaction indicates that people need to be involved in a process which may have an impact on their lives. The question arises, then, as to how designers can investigate the needs and wants of people with respect to technology in the home. This thesis presents a new method that facilitates requirements gathering in the home with a heterogeneous group of users. The method is called the Home Workshop and it draws mainly on methods that have emerged from Participatory Design. A study of five households' use of technology was conducted in central Scotland, each were visited on three occasions, using the Home Workshop method. The data was analysed using grounded theory and ethnographic software. The results show that an investigation of this nature can help uncover clues to our relationship with technology in the home. It can also give directions to designers who are hoping to design technology for innovative home concepts. It has been demonstrated that the general public can participate in a workshop in the home successfully and ideas and valuable contributions can be expected both from children and from the elderly.