A Human-Centered Approach to Technology Development: Designing Cleaning Products for Elders

1. A Human-Centered Approach to Technology Development: Designing Cleaning Products for Elders Susan Wyche Ph.D. Student Human-Centered Computing January 13, 2004

2. About me Why housework and ageing? What is a Human-Centered Approach? Methodology and Tools Results Findings Speculative Design Conclusion Overview

4. What is a Human-Centered Approach? • Interdisciplinary • Contextualize technology in human needs rather than other technology • Intersection of technology development and social analysis

5. Why Housework and Ageing? • Aging population wants to “age in place” • I-methodology • Housework missing from current Smart House/ Digital Home discourse • History of Housework

6. Objective • Use qualitative research to look deeper into how elders (65+ year olds) clean their homes in order to develop concepts for cleaning products that are responsive to their needs. • Questions that guided my research: • Appropriateness of applying F.W. Taylors’ principles of scientific management to domestic environments • Has technology really made housework “easier?” (Vanek, 1978) • How can products be designed to better fit elder’s needs and abilities? • Research tools that capture people’s experiences and allow them to participate in the design process. Using people’s experiences as a source of inspiration. • How can older adult’s lifetime of knowledge and experience help us to design technologies for the future?

7. Design Ethnography Design ethnography is an emerging discipline that draws on many theories, practices, and methodologies of anthropology, as well as other social-science disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, sociology, and communications. It is based upon understanding what people do, what they say, and what they think. We do not ask consumers what they want; instead, we strive to understand how they live (Salvador, Bell, & Anderson 1999).

8. “Guerilla Research” Rapidly immersing myself into anything and everything related to cleaning and ageing. • Try it yourself – trying the product better appreciate the experience actual users might have • Self awareness • Spend as much time as you can with people relevant to the design topic. • Envision scenarios different from what we know.

10. Invaluable Tools

11. Historical Awareness Historical awareness enables us to consciously choose which themes bear repeating and, which we want to resist in our design. (Sengers, 2003) • Housework as “women’s work” • The “labor saving” debate • Loss of sensual joys that accompanied aspects of housework

12. Sample • Deliberately looked for people that were different from myself • 18 Adults (3 men, 15 women) • Age Range 65-89 • Recruited through friends, family, professors, Carnegie Mellon Alumni Directory, Ithaca Department of Aging . . . • Screened for age and accessibility

13. Human-Centered Research Tools • Using official looking questionnaires or formal meetings seemed likely to cast us in the role of doctors, diagnosing user problems and prescribing technological cures . . . Trying to establish roles as provocateurs, we shaped the probes as interventions that would affect the elders while eliciting informative responses from them. (Gaver, Dunne, & Pacenti 1999) • User studies that engage participants and that they enjoy doing. • Sensitivity to changes that occur with aging (i.e. decline in mental and visual acuity)

14. In-home Interviews, Observations, and Tours

15. “Box of Products” • Participants were asked to interact with various cleaning products I purchased. I wanted to see how they reacted to new cleaning products and new dispensing mechanisms (i.e. wipes, Swiffer mops, Method bottle ) and understand their relationship with packaging. 15 participants could not figure out how to make soap dispense from the Method bottle! Most participants were not familiar with wipes. All participants were frustrated with packaging!

16. In-Store Shadowing • One in-store shadowing was done in order to gain insight into how growing older affects the shopping experience. Shopping in Super Wal-Mart was challenging for my 90 year old grandfather. He like many of the people I talked with missed smaller stores with less product choices. “You go to buy these products today your Windex, anything, they’ve got this added, they’ve got that added, they have perfume added, which one do I want?

17. “Memory Scrapbook”

18. “Cleaning Roundtable”

19. “Cleaning Stations” Computer Linoleum Floor Mini Grocery Store Aisle Dusting

20. Cultural Probes

21. Insight Cards • Organize enormous • amount of data • Capture “instances” of • elder’s behavior • Inspiration • Resource for others • Writing everyday (good • habit for graduate student)

22. Results • Findings and Themes • Speculative Designs

23. Housing Design

24. Physical Changes

25. Product Modifications

26. Packaging

27. Changes over time

28. Speculative Design Speculative designs are plausible products which suggest new applications for technology and are often critical of existing ones. They are driven by peoples’ experiences and sometimes purposeful avoid utility. The designs attempt to provoke a search for meaning, using evocation rather than explicit communication (Dunne & Gaver, 1997).

29. (De)tour Guide Worry Stone Prayer Device Gaver and Martin (2000).”Alternatives: Exploring Information through Conceptual Design Proposal.” Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems The Hague, The Netherlands.

30. “Book Bottles”

31. User as Expert

32. “Untouchables”

33. Hands and Knees

34. Calorie Counting Trigger

35. Bottle Monocle

36. Packaging

37. Conclusion Human-centered approach for computational devices?

38. Thank You! Phoebe Sengers, Ph.D., Info. Science/ Science and Tech. Studies Johanna Schoss, Ph.D., Anthropology/ Design and Environ. Analysis ECL for thoughtful feedback yesterday!