Mediating intimacy

Project overview

Intimacy is a crucial element of domestic life, and many interactive technologies designed for other purposes have been widely appropriated for use within intimate relationships. However, there is a deficit in current understandings of how technologies are used within intimate relationships, and how to design technologies to support intimate acts.

We used cultural probes and contextual interviews and other ethnographically informed techniques to investigate how interactive technologies are used within intimate relationships. From this empirical work we generated a thematic understanding of intimacy and the use of interactional technologies to support intimate acts. We used this understanding to inform the design of intimate technologies.

Project team

  • Frank Vetere
  • Martin Gibbs
  • Jesper Kjeldskov
  • Steve Howard
  • Florian 'Floyd' Mueller
  • Sonja Pedell
  • Karen Mecoles
  • Marcus Bunyan

Funding source

Smart Internet Cooperative Research Centre

Publications

  • Howard, S., Kjeldskov, J., Skov, M., Garnaes, K., and Grunberger, O. (2006). Negotiating Presence-in-Absence: Contact, Content and Context. CHI Note, ACM CHI 2006 Montreal.
  • Gibbs, M., Howard, S., Kjeldskov, J., Vetere, F. and Satchell, C. (2006). Was it good for you darling? - Intimacy, Sex and Critical Technical Practice. Workshop Sexual Interactions. ACM CHI 2006 Montreal.
  • Kjeldskov, J., Gibbs, M., Vetere, F., Howard, S., Pedell, S., Mecoles, K., Bunyan, M. (2005). Using Cultural Probes to Explore Mediated Intimacy. Australian Journal of Information Systems, 12(1):102-115.
  • Vetere, F., Gibbs, M., Kjeldskov, J., Howard, S., Mueller, F., Pedell, S., Mecoles, K., and Bunyan, M. (2005). Mediating Intimacy: Designing Technologies to Support Strong-Tie Relationships. Proceedings of ACM CHI 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
  • Gibbs, M., Vetere, F., Howard, S., and Bunyan, M. (2005). SynchroMate: A Phatic Technology for Mediating Intimacy. In Proceedings of DUX: Conference on Designing for User eXperience, San Francisco, CA (3-5 Nov).
  • Vetere, F., Howard, S., and Gibbs, M. (2005). Phatic technologies: Sustaining sociability through ubiquitous computing. In ACM CHI2005: Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Workshop), Portland, Oregon USA (2-7 April).
  • Mueller, F., Vetere, F., Gibbs, M., Kjeldskov, J., Pedell, S., and Howard, S. (2005). Hug Over A Distance. Interactive Poster, ACM CHI 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
  • Gibbs, M., Vetere, F., and Howard, S. (2005). Phatic Technologies. Presented at Less is More: Simple Computing in an Age of Complexity. Microsoft Research, Cambridge, United Kingdom (27-28 April).
  • Davis, H. Francis, P., Benda, P., Gibbs, M., Howard, S., and Vetere, F. (2005). Bridging the Intergenerational Divide: Implications of Employing Cultural Probes in Distributed Homes. Workshop paper, OZCHI 2005. ACM International Conference Proceedings Series, ACM ISBN number: 1-59593-222-4.
  • Howard, S., Vetere, F., Gibbs, M., Kjeldskov, J., Pedell, S., Mecoles, K., Bunyan, M., and Murphy, J. (2004). Mediating intimacy: Digital kisses and cut and paste hugs. Published in Proceedings of BCSHCI2004, Leeds, Sept 2004.

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