FamilyStories

Connecting Family Members Across Time Through Shared Audio Stories

FamilyStories’ technology probes. From Right: Kinetic, TimeKnot, Spark.

FamilyStroies’ concept, design, implementation, and field study took almost two years to complete. The final design included a set of three technology probes named Spark, Kinetic and TimeKnot. Each probe was focused on a design factor in asynchronous audio storytelling. FamilyStories devices differ in how people can listen to the stories. The design focused on connecting family members in different time zones through a slow, minimalist yet potentially engaging design. The system allows family members to share audio stories together as a way to share activities, experiences, and “catch up” with family members. This work is published as:

Heshmat, Y., Neustaedter, C., McCaffrey, K., Odom, W., Wakkary, R. & Yang, Z. (2020) FamilyStories: Asynchronous Audio Storytelling for Family Members Across Time Zones Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction New York, NY, USA, ACM Press. [PDF] (Winner of Honourable Mention Award from CHI2020)