Broken expectations in the digital home

As part of an ongoing effort to understand ease of use of digital home technologies, we undertook an exploratory study of people who use their home networks for more than just broadband Internet access. In particular, we wanted to understand the overhead, or problem-time, people spent with their home network devices. As expected, we saw issues of broken hardware and broken software. We also found that problems are often caused by broken expectations, a mismatch between what a person expects to be able to do and specific device capabilities. In this paper we explore broken expectations in the digital home with examples from our study. These observations suggest further research into the ways user expectations and activities shape the digital home experience. Keywords Digital home; digital living; wireless networks; ease of use; home IT; digital media; field study. ACM Classification Keywords H5.2 User-centered design

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Sara A. Bly, Bill N. Schilit, David W. McDonald, Barbara Rosario, Ylian Saint-Hilaire
• Keywords: CHI 2006, Digital Home Experience, Digital Home Technologies, Human Computer Interaction, Keywords Digital Home