Living with Smart Things

Jasmine Jones is a postdoctoral associate at the University of Minnesota, in Computer Science. She studies how personal and collective values influence the appropriation of technologies into everyday life, and how to integrate key values into the technology design process. Her work focuses on applications of physical and embedded computing in family and home life, healthcare, and assistive technologies. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan in Information Science.

Title: Living with Smart Things

Abstract: When a computer isn’t just a box with a screen, but a treasured object, an essential tool, or even an extension of your body, how does this impact your interaction with it and through it? My research advocates for a human-centered design approach for embedded systems driven by how these technologies are perceived and used in social settings. In this talk, I will outline this approach to design through examples highlighting how social values and influences can be discovered and operationalized in the technology design process. First, I will deconstruct the design process of KidKeeper, a toy-like audiorecording device to help parents capture childhood memories of their kids without “ruining the moment.” Second, I will discuss an ethnographic study to derive insights for multi-generational information systems, based on how families preserve and pass down collective memories across generations. I will close with a discussion of my future research agenda for “socially embedded computing,” combining physical computing with value-sensitive design to develop technologies that fit into the social fabric of everyday life.