Digital technologies in everyday environments: Zooming in and out to children's and their families' smart device practices with public and private screens

ABSTRACT

Digital technologies have become more and more ubiquitous. The role of technology in our everyday has changed radically, shaping existing practices and facilitating new ones. Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research has recently interested in practice studies. Looking beyond novelty value of technology, practice studies try to understand how technology becomes integrated into everyday life and how it shapes everyday practices in longer timespan. This paper responds to the recent call for practice studies and utilizes Nicolini's toolbox approach for making sense of technology-facilitated practices of children and their families in their everyday life. We first zoom-in on children's practices with a multipurpose public display through an ethnographic field study, and then zoom-out to the children's and families' smart device practices through a diary study. We show that children's practices with public display were surprisingly similar with practices elsewhere. The contribution is 1) demonstrating the use of the toolkit approach, and 2) shedding light on children's and families' smart device practices in private and public settings.

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Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Collaborative and social computing

    • Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)

    • HCI design and evaluation methods