Methodological considerations of technology co-design with families and design implications on mediating family connectedness from empirical research

Methods and tools for co-designing with families

As justified in the ‘Introduction’ section above, we use ‘methods’ to refer to research activities and ‘tools’ to refer to the auxiliary instruments for assisting the investigatory activities, especially the materials and components for creative activities. Furthermore, as defined in the Phases, Methods, and Tools of Co-Design section, design implications are found at the intersection of pre-design research and generative research; design ideas and concepts are determined at the point between generative research and evaluative research; and the launch of a finalised design product marks the end of evaluative research and the start of post-design research (Sanders and Stappers, 2014a; Hanington and Martin, 2019).

Accordingly, in Table 5, we map the methods used in each study with the co-design phases according to the purposes and outputs of the research activities. Three studies record pre-design research, five studies record generative research, and five studies record evaluative research; none of the studies record post-design research. Overall, in the field of co-designing technology with families for mediating their connectedness, there is limited pre-design research about/with families, and the methods adopted for this are also limited. There are more diverse generative research methods, including various forms of participatory design (PD)/co-design workshops, technology probes, and idea testing with initial prototypes, supported by methods such as interviews, observation, and data logging. Prototype testing and deployment are the main evaluative methods in co-design research, accompanied by data logging and follow-up interviews and questionnaires.

Interviewing, which is a fundamental research method that can help to extract insights directly from participants (Hanington and Martin, 2019, pp. 280–282), is the most widely adopted research method in co-designing with families. It is adopted in six of the studies (excepting only Raju, 2018) and can be adopted in the pre-design, generative, and evaluative phases as a stand-alone research method to understand families’ real-world experiences or as a supportive method for getting follow-up insights on design from other research activities in the co-design process. The studies of Vetere et al. (2005), Plaisant et al. (2006), Judge et al. (2010), and Christensen et al. (2019) use contextual interviews in the domestic environment, whereas the families in the studies of Follmer et al. (2010) and Tzou et al. (2019) are interviewed in studio settings following lab-based testing or co-design workshops. Home visits can also be adopted across the pre-design, generative, and evaluative research phases to attain a better understanding of the domestic environments of the engaged families, the contextual environment of the design, and how the families use the technologies in real-world settings (Vetere et al., 2005; Plaisant et al., 2006; Raju, 2018).

PD or co-design workshops can theoretically also be adopted throughout the pre-design, generative, and evaluative phases of design research according to research needs (Hanington and Martin, 2019, pp. 330–331). In the included studies, PD or co-design workshops are mostly adopted in the generative phase of co-design research, with four studies using these workshops to engage families in various forms of creative activities for ideation. Activities for PD and co-design workshops at the generative stage range from brainstorming to ideas co-creation to low-tech prototyping and artifact co-making. A PD workshop also appears as a pre-design research method in the study of Christensen et al. (2019), in which the authors propose two ‘provotype’ activities to provoke families to co-create shared artifacts that can inform possible designs of technologies for inducing connectedness and togetherness in remote and co-located families.

Referring to Table 3, the tools supporting PD/co-design activities are usually low-tech art materials that are plain or shapable. However, in the study of Raju (2018), the grandmother and her grandchildren are exposed to VR helmets and 360-degree video, which they later use to co-create footage of a virtual home based on other low-tech prototypes they have made for family storytelling. Furthermore, in the study of Tzou et al. (2019), digital, robotic materials are applied together with cardboard and other art materials for family co-designing. Whether these technologies and materials can be further applied in other projects related to co-designing with families is unclear and requires further empirical exploration.

Cultural probes are mainly adopted in pre-design research as tools for exploratory research; they also represent an exploratory research method in design (Gaver et al., 1999; Hanington and Martin, 2019, pp. 132–133). Cultural probes are provocative instruments comprising any kinds of things that can provoke participants’ self-understanding and record their everyday encounters (Hanington and Martin, 2019, p. 132): pens, notebooks, papers, printouts, cards, cameras, and so on (see Table 3). The families engaged in the studies of Vetere et al. (2005) and Plaisant et al. (2006) are given cultural probes to reflect on their daily interactions with intimate partners or with other family members and their adoption of technologies in their everyday family communication. In contrast, technology probes, which are instruments that afford the simplest technological functions to be evaluated, are proposed for adoption at the beginning of generative research (Hutchinson et al., 2003; Plaisant et al., 2006). Technology probe deployment represents the investigatory method, in which families examine ideas about technology design for family communication in actual domestic contexts. The application of cultural probes and technology probes in the included studies coincides with the suggestion in the framework of Standers and Stappers (2014a, p. 11) that probes can be applied in pre-design and early generative research.

Prototypes are often generated by design professionals at the end of the generative stage and then tested in studio settings (Follmer et al., 2010) and/or deployed in the field and used for a period of time by participating families (Plaisant et al., 2006; Judge et al., 2010; Christensen et al., 2019) to test whether the prototype can actually mediate the feeling of connectedness among family members. The method of data logging is used to support technology probe deployment and prototype testing/deployment by capturing the content and actions generated by the families as they use the technology (Plaisant et al., 2006; Follmer et al., 2010).

Like interviews, focus groups, online surveys, and questionnaires are fundamental research methods that are not commonly used in the included studies but can be adopted as needed to collect necessary information related to the design, such as desires related to remote family coordination (Vetere et al., 2005; Plaisant et al., 2006) and families’ opinions on the designed prototype (Christensen et al., 2019). Observation is not adopted as an exploratory research method at the beginning of design research but sometimes serves as an element of research triangulation to investigate families’ interactions mediated by the devised prototypes of potential technologies (Follmer et al., 2010) or families’ actions throughout the co-design process (Tzou et al., 2019).

Challenges in co-designing with families

The limited results of the literature identification and screening somewhat indicate the difficulties of co-designing with families. The lack of research covering all four phases of co-design also suggests challenges in long-term partnerships with families in the co-design of technology. In Table 6, we list the phases of families’ engagement in each research study, according to which we revise the roles of families in design research of the included studies (see the second and third columns). The family ties of participants actively engaged in the research are presented in the last column of the table.

Five studies mention challenges in co-design research related to participant recruitment and findings generalisation. As the studies of Plaisant et al. (2006) and Raju (2018) engage only one family for long-term collaboration, the research could be biased and the possibility of generalising the research outcomes to other contexts and populations is limited. A similar issue is reported in the study of Judge et al. (2010), in which limited diverse families are engaged in long-term prototype deployment. The studies of Vetere et al. (2005) and Christensen et al., despite engaging more families, also report potential issues in research generalisation regarding family demographics and diversity.

Although design professionals may have strong intentions to recruit more families for a long-term partnership, as indicated in the study of Plaisant et al. (2006), there are many challenges related to time scheduling, technical issues, and potential changes/updates. If the research involves multiple households, it is common to face networking and software configuration problems across multiple households and devices, and there are difficulties involved in debugging and troubleshooting emergent issues with the design remotely without physical access (Plaisant et al., 2006, pp. 335, 341–342). Similarly, Judge et al. (Judge et al., 2010, p. 2363) encounter latency of responses in actual deployment due to unstable home Internet connections. Regarding time scheduling for research activities, especially for regular check-ins, it is difficult to accurately estimate the time needed for software installation and upgrades, and family members could have busy and diverse schedules, all of which can result in delays in the research progress (Plaisant et al., 2006, pp. 335, 341–342). The demand for renewal may also lead to reluctance or irritability in some families, which can lead to an inability to collaborate in the research (Plaisant et al., 2006, p. 335).

Raju (2018) indicates difficulties in setting free the imagination and creativities of families. Excluding families from the initial physical model until late in the process restricts their reflections on their aspirations and lived experiences (Raju, 2018, p. 66). It is also difficult for families to generate design ideas if there is no specific goal of design in mind.

However, there is no significant correlation in the reviewed studies between the revised roles of families in co-design research and the family ties of research participants. There is only an indication that partnering with families of multiple households can lead to difficulties in co-design research. What is certain is that engaging multiple families for a long time across all phases of research to co-design technology for family connectedness is currently not practised, and its feasibility requires further exploration.

Scenarios of technology-mediated family connectedness

Referring to the design concepts of the included studies listed in Table 4, scenarios of technology-mediated family connectedness can be determined based on distance (co-located/remote), synchronicity (shared/separate, synchronous/asynchronous), and types of family ties (the six types as presented in Table 6). As summarised in the ‘Results’ section above, five of the reviewed studies are about remote family connectedness and two about directly co-creating physical or virtual representations of family stories (Raju, 2018; Tzou et al., 2019). We can draw from this that most designs attempt to address the separation of families to mediate connectedness between two or more remote/distributed family members.

Among the five designs for mediating remote family connectedness, four afford real-time presence and awareness through various channels. The design in Vetere et al. (2005) mediates the intimacy and mutual awareness of remote couples/spouses through smart clothes that can inflate or release to imitate hugs. Judge et al. (2010) devise a media space for remote domestic sharing through which remote households can always be aware of what the other side is doing through a video screen, hence generating a feeling of connectedness. Similar to providing a media space for perceiving mutual existences, the designs of Follmer et al. (2010) and Christensen et al. (2019) create virtual shared contexts for remote parents and children to feel togetherness. Follmer et al. (2010) adopt a video feed for projecting actual images of parents and children into the same virtual scenarios in a video conferencing system, and Christensen et al. (2019) make use of avatars to represent the separated parents and children in the virtual space.

However, real-time presence and awareness through shared activities or synchronous information sharing are not always required for family connectedness. The study of Plaisant et al. (2006) reveals the grandparents’ satisfaction in just knowing the updated schedules of their adult children and grandchildren. There is a consensus among members of the engaged family that everyone has different schedules and that the children and parents in the junior family are always busy (Plaisant et al., 2006, p. 327). Sharing and keeping records of schedules is already satisfactory for maintaining a certain connection with family members without disturbing each other (Plaisant et al., 2006, p. 327). Furthermore, as the grandparents cannot handle complex designs, it is sufficient to provide them with something simple and easy to manipulate (Plaisant et al., 2006, p. 328). As for the design by Christensen et al. (2019), it not only affords real-time, shared activities for feeling togetherness but also separate contributions to a single story.

Unlike the other projects, the research by Raju (2018) and Tzou et al. (2019) involves trying to create a sense of family connectedness throughout the process of co-design. In these two studies involving imaginative storytelling, family members of different generations co-create a family story together and present it with high-tech instruments and low-tech materials. The outcomes of their designs are technological but physical, representing not only the family’s co-made story but also the connectedness among those who made it. This is consistent with previous studies on co-design indicating the influences of the co-design process on participants’ well-being.

From these findings we can conclude that mutual awareness can support family connectedness but also that the shared effort itself can facilitate a feeling of being connected with family members (Hassenzahl et al., 2012, p. 6). This is applicable to the remote context and co-located experiences and to diverse types of family ties.

Concerns over mediating family connectedness by technologies

Privacy and self-disclosure

Privacy concerns surround designs involving video camera installations, given the amount and contents of the information disclosed. Even between two households of a family, such installations can cause discomfort over being watched unintentionally, and people have different comfort levels in switching between watching and being watched (Judge et al., 2010, p. 2368). People can feel unsafe without the autonomy to decide what and how much to disclose, highlighting the significance for alleviating stress of allowing control over disclosure by offering options of access to content on both sides (Judge et al., 2010, pp. 2368–2369). Wearable technologies that are closely attached to human bodies to simulate intimate acts also arouse privacy concerns; as ‘intimate acts often entail self-disclosure’ (Vetere et al., 2005, p. 472), they present challenges related to privacy. Providing control over what to share also works in this design context (Feijt et al., 2021). However, as Feijt et al. (2021, p. 4) suggest, subjective experiences and perceptions must also be considered to fully comprehend the impact of technology-simulated sensory experiences on our social interactions. Small individual differences may also affect people’s feelings about the same design and ultimately hinder their willingness to adopt.

Tangible designs

Although previous research has suggested that tangible technologies bridging the physical and the digital are more likely to meet the needs of easy manipulation, given our ability of eye-hand coordination, and hence to achieve higher levels of acceptance (Yarosh et al., 2011; Ishii et al., 2012; Bhowmick and Stolterman Bergqvist, 2023), the included studies rarely have tangible designs as output. It is sometimes unrealistic to pursue only tangible design, considering people’s familiarity with existing patterns, children’s attention spans, and constraints of space, equipment, and cost. This insight can be seen clearly from the study of Follmer et al. (2010), who evaluate intangible and tangible prototypes with families but return to the intangible design after iteration. Follmer et al. (2010) admit that tangibles can facilitate communication, thinking, and creativity but also point out that children engaging with the tangibles ‘lacked the ability to share their state with remote parties’ (p. 56).

Follmer et al. (2010) indicate that the key to generating a sense of family togetherness is to create a shared context and support shared activities building on the existing play patterns of children and other family members. They, therefore, scaffold collaborative storytelling between young children and adult family members and playful interactions through video conferencing to mediate remote family connectedness. Similar insights and practices can be found in the study of Christensen et al. (2019).

Nevertheless, this does not mean that tangible designs are not beneficial at all. For older adults and young children especially, leveraging familiar forms, tools, and real objects that they have been living with can facilitate acceptance of technologies. Plaisant et al. (2006, p. 330) investigate the use of a digital pen and digital paper to create a sense of familiarity for older adults in the family, with the older adults finding it too complex to understand and manage the digital notifiers (Plaisant et al., 2006, p. 328). Familiarity and simpleness are hence the topmost concerns in devising technologies for manipulation by diverse age groups. Embedding technologies that can detect real objects to interweave the virtual and the real and the tangible and the intangible while not requiring the exposure of sensory or other private information might be a feasible approach (Follmer et al., 2010, p. 56).

Playful collaborations

We touch on playful collaborations above in discussing shared activities between parents and children. Four of the included articles provide common insights related to mediating the family connectedness between young children and other adult family members in a playful, collaborative way, which involves scaffolding storytelling with other interactive, shared activities that children consider interesting and fun while feeling being connected with other family members.

However, a concern related to technologies designed to afford playful collaborations is different perceptions of playfulness. Play activities for children may not be as interesting to adults, and perceptions of playfulness vary by age. Extra considerations are required to encourage adult family members to let go while making the difficulty and playfulness of content and activities suitable for both children and adults (Eriksson, 2010, p. 345; Follmer et al., 2010, p. 52).