Finding a Place for UbiComp in the Home

The movement of design out of the workplace and into the home brings with it the need to develop new analytic concepts to consider how ubiquitous computing might relate to and support everyday activities in domestic settings. In this paper we present a number of concepts derived from ethnographic studies of routine activities and technology uses implicated in the production and consumption of communication in the home. These concepts sensitise design to the importance of the ecology of the domestic space and distributed arrangements of collaboration to communication. They draw attention to the places where communication is accomplished and the routines whereby communication is articulated, thereby highlighting ‘prime sites’ for situating ubiquitous computing in the domestic environment.