Palco (Endo et al. 2018)

Palco is a tangible avatar object that represents remote partners' personal states. Users share their states via internet through their smartphones. Three personal data are presented on Palco: Emotional state through Palco's facial expression, activity state through Palco's body image and location through the image projected in front of Palco. The visual information are displayed on Palco's physical object by a small beamer. Users can therefore build and customize their own Palco with simple material like papers.

Reference: Endo, S. & Fujinami, K. 2018. Realizing Loose Communication with Tangible Avatar to Facilitate Recipient’s Imagination. Information 2018, 9(32).



In Your Eyes (Baishya & Neustaedter, 2017)

In Your Eyes is a technology probe, designed for couples (or partners) in long-distance relationships to experience (see and hear) the partner's living world. It has a simple setup - two smartphones and the Skype app on which auto-answer mode is activated. The smartphones are then fixed in users' shirt pockets. The users experience their partners' living world through live video stream from Skype on other devices.


Reference: U. Baishya & C. Neustaedter, 2017. In Your Eyes: Anytime, anywhere video and audio streaming for couples. In Proceedings of CSCW 2017 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

Musikbox 1188 (by Rensch 2016)

Musikbox 1188 is a player system that allows users to listen to their music and share music with their friends. It includes a speaker and an APP. The speaker is connected to the music device (the smartphone) via cable or Bluetooth. There are different joint points for the knob on the speaker. When users want to listen to their own music, they put the knob onto the first joint point to start the play. The knob further serves as volume controller. The user can invite friends to join her/his music circle. When her/his friends are also listening to music with their smartphones, the LEDs next to other joint points will twinkle. The user can put her/his knob onto one of the twinkling joint points so that she/he can listen to what this friend is listening to in real time.

Resource: http://www.ludwigrensch.com/musikbox-1188

hub (Heyer et al 2013)

Hub is designed for family members to share personal activities in their joint dwelling environment with each other in a more "cosy" way. The hub is connected to the members' Facebook, Instagram and/or Twitter accounts and it shows only the family members' activities on those social media. Users can also set up filter so that some activities will not be presented on the hub.

Reference: Clint Heyer, Irina Shklovski, Nanna Jensen. 2013. Making a Home for Social Media. In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM international joint conference on Pervasive and ubiquitous computing (UbiComp '13). 717-720.

Senseμ (by Rodrigues et al 2012)

Senseμ (Sense Me) is a system requiring munimum input from the child, yet supporting meaningful inferences about the child's educational performance and social wellbeing. It attempts to infer three indicators of educational performance and social wellbeing: physical activity, verbal activity and social activity. It also enables children to self-report affective information using a predefined set of icons and emotion labels. A web application allows the teacher to review all indicators and annotate them. Communication between the teacher and the parent is two-directional with the goal of motivating sustaining communication over the long run. Having children’ privacy in mind, Senseμ is designed to support inferences from minimal awareness cues, it attempts to obfuscate sensitive information, and does not record conversations or store precise data.

Reference: Rodrigues, J., Gouveia, R., Lyra, O., Karapanos, E. 2012 Sense me: Supporting awareness in parent-child relationships through mobile sensing. In DIS'12.

CoupleVIBE (Bales et al 2011)

 "In CoupleVIBE, when a user arrives at or departs from a frequented location, her partner automatically receives a vibrotactile message on his mobile phone [...] CoupleVIBE's visual interface is basic, consisting of just two screens, the status screen and the vibration assignment screen. A user tags a location [... and] is asked to give a name to the location [...] the user's partner selects a vibrotactile message to identify the location.

Reference: Bales, E. et al. 2011 CoupleVIBE: Mobile Implicit Communication to Improve Awareness for (Long-Distance) Couples. In CSCW 2011

InPhase (by Tsujita et al, 2010)

(setup on the door as example)

The InPhase system is an ambient indicator that will notify two remote users when, for example, they are both opening doors, windows, or curtains; watching the same TV channel; sitting on a sofa; or in the kitchen at the same time. Depending on the frequency of coincidences, the level of activity in the receiver varies. Therefore, changing the sound of the chime depends on the frequency of coincidences for certain groups of actions. Likewise, it is possible to use lights or actuators (instead of sounds) to notify the receiving party.

Source: Tsujita, H., Tsukada, K., and Siio, I. 2010. InPhase. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA’09). ACM Press, 3401–2406.
http://tsujita.org/projects/inphase/

CU-Later (Tsujita et al 2010)

"CU-Later is a system which allows synchronizing activities across time zones by displaying recorded video of a remote activity after a time shift. As one example of its use, the system connects two remote dining tables and lets users see and hear each other having dinner despite actually having done so at different times. We discuss the design of this system and a preliminary field test of time-shifted video."

Reference:
Hitomi Tsujita, Svetlana Yarosh, Gregory D. Abowd, CU-Later: A Communication System Considering Time Difference, In Proceedings of the 12th ACM international Conference Adjunct Papers on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp2010), pp.435–436, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 26 – 29, 2010.
http://tsujita.org/projects/cu-later/

Family Window / Honey (by Neustaedter 2010)

The basical function of Family Window and Honey is a always-on video connection. The installation contains webcams and displays. Other functions in thier programmed software are added in the autobiographical design process. These expanded functions are handwritten messages, time shift recording, activity timeline etc.



Reference: Neustaedter, C. Judge, T. K. Sengers, P. 2015. Autobiographical Design in the Home. In Judge, T. K. & Neustaedter, C. eds. Studying and Designing Technology for Domestic Life.
Judge, T. K., Neustaedter, C., Kurtz, A. F. 2010. The Family Window: The Design and Evaluation of a Domestic Media Space. In CHI 2010.
http://www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/023/1/023122.HTML
http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/video-chat-hci/

Globetoddler (by Yarosh et al, 2009)

The Blobetoddler is a communication system for child and travelling parents. On the child's end, a sensor-equipped doll, in combination with a virtual interface , functions as the main user interface — a “ portal ” that leads straight to the parent. The traveling parent can use his or her mobile phone to record audio comments, capture photos and video, and send them to the child. The next time the child plays with the doll, he or she
is notified of the new content and is encouraged by the system to take a look at it on a nearby computer or TV screen. If the child chooses to do so, the parent is discretely notifi ed of the activity and is able to see the content the child is currently looking at. This approach enables the parent to (1) if available, join in to chat with the child and comment on the content in real time (synchronous interaction), (2) if busy, leave a comment later (asynchronous communication), and (3) dynamically learn what the child is interested in and possibly adapt future interactions to those interests.

Source: Yarosh, S., Davis, H., Modlitba, P., Skov, M. Vetere, F. Mobile Technologis for Parent/Child Relationships. In Mobile Technology for Children, Druin, A. edt. 2009, pp. 285-306

Tangible MissU & Virtual MissU (by Lottridge et al, 2009)

Tangible MissU (Mini interactive shared sound Unit) consists of a tangible ambient sound device and a shared music playlist. Users can listen to the current song, add songs to the playlist, reorder songs in the playlist, and browse the playlist history.

Additionally, they can listen to the background sounds of the remote partner’s environment. Each partner has one MissU device in their home, to share sounds in a certain area such as the bedroom.

Each partner is represented by a color. On one partner’s device moving the green slider controls the volume of his outgoing sounds and moving the blue slider controls the other partner’s incoming sounds. One partner’s own ambient sounds are captured via a microphone and shown as the luminosity of a green LED. Both partners can move the green slider to the edge of the device to restrict his outgoing sounds, thus dimming the LED. Moving it towards the center maximizes the outgoing signal. If one partner needs quiet, he can lower sounds from the remote partner’s environment by moving the blue slider to the edge of MissU. However, the blue LED still shows the absolute volume of the sounds in the other partner’s environment.

Virtual MissU is a flash application that streams ambient sounds and music from a joint music playlist. Partners navigate to the MissU URLs using a regular browser. Each partner’s sounds are represented by a colored sphere, which can be manipulated directly in the same way as the tangible sliders. Virtual MissU was designed for the home. Another variant Simulated MissU is designed for mobile situations.

Source: Lottridge, D., Masson, N., and Mackay, W. 2009. Sharing empty moments. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’09). ACM Press, 2329–2338.

Epigraph (by Harper 2009)

An Epigraph is a multiuser social network site, which displays the status updates and content of an Epigraph group. Each member of a group has their own space on the site, like a tile on a wall, and this shows their content. Content is created by sending messages to the Epigraph address. Messages can be sent via any channel - email, MMS, SMS or voice.

Reference:
Lindley, S. E., Harper, R., Sellen, A. 2009. Desiring to be in Touch in a Changing Communications Landscape: Attitudes of Older Adults. In CHI'09
http://plei-plei.info/epigraph/

weConnect (by Milic-Frayling et al, 2008)

 

weConnect is a web service including two one-directional channels, one for each person, to enable independent media stream in each direction. Using the weConnect tools and media content available on the device or on the Web, the user can create content mixes and push them through the channel to the recipient. The weConnect Web server will store the content and provide a gateway to the recipient. The recipient’s device automatically “pulls” the content from the server and displays it through the weConnect viewer on the mobile phone, the desktop, or any Web enabled device that runs the weConnect client.

Source: Milic-Frayling, N., Hicks, M., Jones, R., and Costello, J. 2008. Exploring personal broadcast channels for rich media sharing in close relationships. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM’08). ACM Press, 23–30.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/weconnect/

teddy bear (by Hemmeryckx-Deleersnijder et al, 2008)

The teddy bear captures pictures and can be connected and displayed on a remote tv. In order to do so, the bear must be placed on a table, which acts as a trigger to start a rich context- sharing conversation over the TV. By placing the bear on the table the user can call someone. The pictures captured over the day can also be seen by the person who was called.

Source: Hemmeryckx-Deleersnijder, B. and Thorne, J. M. 2008. Awareness and conversational context-sharing to enrich TV-based communication. Comput. Entertainment 6, 1, 1–13.

eMutts (by Yarosh, 2008)

 

eMutts consists of a series of toys and sensors that children can carry these as key-chains. Some are passive sensors that record data: pedometer, ambientnoise sensor, GPS, etc. Other eMutts require explicit interactions from the child: stress ball which records pressure throughout the day, voice recorder, digital camera. The child selects one or two toys to carry. When the child docks the toys at the end of the day, it will upload the data on a computer and send it to the parent.

Source: Yarosh, S. 2008. Supporting parent-child interaction in divorced families. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC’08). ACM Press, 33–36.
Yarosh, S., Davis, H., Modlitba, P., Skov, M. Vetere, F. Mobile Technologis for Parent/Child Relationships. In Mobile Technology for Children, Druin, A. edt. 2009, pp. 285-306
http://home.cc.gatech.edu/lana/23

SyncTrash (by Tsujita et al, 2007)

 

The SyncTrash system consists of a pair of trash boxes with servo motors, pushon foot switches, PCs, and a Web server. The servo motor is equipped at the side of a trash box for opening/closing the lid, and is connected to a computer with a PhidgetServo device. The foot switch is also connected to the computer with a Phidget Interface Kit. When a person presses the foot switch, a program on the PC opens the lid of the trash box by activating the servo motor. Next, the program sends the state of the trash box (open/close) to a CGI program on the web server. Then, the PC program in the other house detects the state by polling the web server, and opens the trash box in the same way. Thus, once a person opens the lid of his/her trash box, the lid of the other distant trash box opens as well.

Source: Tsujita, H., Siio, I., and Tsukada, K. 2007. SyncDecor: Appliances for Sharing Mutual Awareness between Lovers Separated by Distance. In Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’07). ACM Press, 2699–2704.
http://lab.siio.jp/index.php?SyncDecor

SyncLamp (by Tsujita et al, 2007)

The SyncLamp systems consist of a pair of PCs in each house and a Web server for the sharing of information. The SyncLamp system consists of a pair of lamps with X10 lamp modules, X10 controllers, PCs with X10 computer interfaces, and a Web server. When a person turns on the lamp with the X10 controller, a program on the computer intercepts the X10 signal via the X10 computer interface. Then, the program sends the event to a CGI program on the web server so that the information can be shared. Meanwhile, a PC program in the other person’s house detects the event by polling the web server, and turns on the other lamp via the X10 computer interface. Thus, controlling the brightness of one lamp, the partner’s lamp also changes to the same brightness.

Tsujita, H., Siio, I., and Tsukada, K. 2007. SyncDecor:Appliances for Sharing Mutual Awareness between Lovers Separated by Distance. In Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’07). ACM Press, 2699–2704.
http://lab.siio.jp/index.php?SyncDecor

Motion Presence application (by Bentley et al, 2007)

Motion Presence application is an augmented phone book style application that allows close friends and family to view each other’s current motion status (“moving” or “not moving”) on their mobile phones.

Source: Bentley, F. R. and Metcalf, C. J. 2007. Sharing motion information with close family and friends. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’07). ACM Press, 1361–1370.

Jogging over a distance (Mueller et al. 2007)

"Jogging over a distance" is a set-up that allows joggers to have synchronous interaction during the jogging with their remote jogging partners. The main part is a couple of earphones that play music during the jogging. The earphones further changes the volume of each speakers to create an acoustic effect of spatial changes. Through this the joggers are able to feel the partners' real geographical change. Finally when a partner is becoming faster or slower, the volume of music in the partner's earphone also become louder or quieter. They may want to keep up or slow down for the partners.




Reference: F. F. Mueller, S. O'Brien & A. Thorogood. 2007. Jogging over a distance - Supporting a "jogging together" experience although being apart. In CHI EA'07 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems.


F. F. Mueller, F. Vetere, M.R. Gibbs, D. Edge, S. Agamanolis. 2010. Jogging over a distance between Europe and Australia. In Proceedings of UIST '10 the symposium on User interface software and technology.

Lover’s Cup (by Chung et al, 2006)

Two cups are wirelessly connected with each other. If the user holds one cup, it triggers soft glowing processes for the remote cup. When a person is drinking, the rim of the other cup begins to glow. Additionally, the cup displays the level of the liquid inside of the paired cup. If both owners take a sip at the same time, both cups are glowing at its maximum illumination. If a person shakes the cup, the other will vibrate. When used for social events, toasting two cups together activates them into a pair of Lover’s Cup.

Reference: Chung, H., Lee, C.-H. J., and Selker, T. 2006. Lover’s cups: Drinking Interfaces as New Communication Channels. In Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’06). ACM Press, 375–380.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~jackylee/cups.htm