Maps of Our Lives: Sensing People and Objects Together in the Home

The proliferation of portable electronic devices in the home creates the opportunity for increasingly complex interactions between household residents and their devices. We present a study of these interactions which focuses on laptop computers in homes with wireless networks, describing the technical infrastructure for the study, and exploring a range of findings about home life. We also present several design implications of this work. Highly accurate position and device usage data has been collected about residents and wireless laptop computers, and visualizations of the data were used to motivate discussion during interviews. This data collection and interviewing method is a novel and promising alternative to other methods such as diaries or self-report surveys.