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SyncDecor: communication appliances for virtual cohabitation

Published: 28 May 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Despite the fact that various means of communication such as mobile phones, instant messenger and e-mail are now widespread; many romantic couples separated by long distances worry about the health of their relationships. Likewise, these couples have a greater desire to feel a sense of connection and synchronicity with their partners than traditional inter-family bonds. In many prior research projects, unique devices were developed that required a level of interpretation which did not directly affect one's daily routine - and therefore were more casual in nature. However, this paper concentrates on the use of common, day-to-day items and modifying them to communicate everyday actions while maintaining a sustained and natural usage pattern for strongly paired romantic couples. For this purpose, we propose the "SyncDecor" system, which pairs traditional appliances and allow them to remotely synchronize and provide awareness or cognizance about their partners - thereby creating a virtual "living together" feeling. We present evidence, from a 3-month long field study, where traditional appliances provided a significantly more natural, varied and sustained usage patterns which ultimately enhanced communications between the couples.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    AVI '08: Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces
    May 2008
    483 pages
    ISBN:9781605581415
    DOI:10.1145/1385569
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 28 May 2008

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    Author Tags

    1. awareness
    2. communication
    3. synchronization

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    • (2024)Light Bridge: Improving social connectedness through ambient spatial interactionProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3660689(1658-1665)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
    • (2018)ToolShakerProceedings of the 9th Augmented Human International Conference10.1145/3174910.3174956(1-3)Online publication date: 6-Feb-2018
    • (2014)Goofy Mus, Grumpy Mur and Dirty MufProceedings of the 2014 Workshops on Advances in Computer Entertainment Conference10.1145/2693787.2693790(1-4)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2014
    • (2014)MurMur moderators, the talking playful seatsProceedings of the 18th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Media Business, Management, Content & Services10.1145/2676467.2676505(231-237)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2014
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    • (2011)Up close and personalProceedings of the 25th BCS Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.5555/2305316.2305359(227-236)Online publication date: 4-Jul-2011
    • (2009)FunbrellaProceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology10.1145/1690388.1690400(66-71)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2009

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