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Who's hogging the bandwidth: the consequences of revealing the invisible in the home

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

As more technologies enter the home, householders are burdened with the task of digital housekeeping-managing and sharing digital resources like bandwidth. In response to this, we created and evaluated a domestic tool for bandwidth management called Home Watcher. Our field trial showed that when resource contention amongst different household members is made visible, people's understanding of bandwidth changes and household politics are revealed. In this paper, we describe the consequences of showing real time resource usage in a home, and how this varies depending on the social make up of the household.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2010
    2690 pages
    ISBN:9781605589299
    DOI:10.1145/1753326
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    Published: 10 April 2010

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    Author Tags

    1. bandwidth monitoring
    2. home broadband
    3. home networks

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    • (2024)Seam Work and Simulacra of Societal Impact in Networking Research: A Critical Technical Practice ApproachProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642337(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024) Power in the Home: Digital Housekeeping and Its Relevance to Information Behaviour, PIM , and Information Ethics Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/pra2.118461:1(1058-1061)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
    • (2023)Intra-Acting With Technology During Remote Fieldwork in Homes: Curating Video Interviews and Drawing MethodsInternational Journal of Qualitative Methods10.1177/1609406923118546622Online publication date: 12-Sep-2023
    • (2023)The Everyday Experience of Connectivity Limits – Insights from French Students during the Covid PandemicProceedings of the 34th Conference on l'Interaction Humain-Machine10.1145/3583961.3583975(1-11)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2023
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    • (2022)Social Contexts, Agency, and Conflicts: Exploring Critical Aspects of Design for Future Smart Home TechnologiesACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/348505829:2(1-30)Online publication date: 16-Jan-2022
    • (2021)Naturally Together: A Systematic Approach for Multi-User Interaction With Natural InterfacesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34760905:CSCW2(1-31)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2021
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