Divorced Families & TechnologyFieldwork

While the HCI community has long investigated issues of designing for family and the home, very little attention has focused on the lives of divorced families and the ways in which interactive systems might be better designed to address the very real and growing issues they face. In this project I report on field evidence from 13 in depth interviews conducted with families of parents and children in joint custody situations, and unpack key emergent problems and tensions. This project produced a range of design implications and opportunities that give shape to how the HCI community may be able to have a positive effect on this set of potential users. The overarching goal of this research is to better understand how the HCI community might begin to approach designing for this alternative family. The fieldwork specifically related to teens in divorced families triggered my subsequent more in depth projects on teenagers and their virtual possessions.

Publication

Odom, W.. Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi, J. (2010). Designing for Dynamic Family Structures: Divorced Families and Interactive Systems. In proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems. Aarhus, Denmark. DIS ’10. ACM Press, 151-160. (Local Copy, ACM Link)