Response: Family Portals :- Connecting Families Through Multifamily Media Space

The researchers studied the use of a video conferencing (family portal) between three families--referred to as a triad. The family portal did not include audio for privacy reasons. However, a whiteboard was provided to communicate through hand written messages. The researches selected a triad that were close to each other and wanted more communication. Moreover, the connection between the families were women as reported in a study that women are household communicators. for e.g, One triad was between a mother, her daughter, and the daughter's sister.

Results of the Study:
In general the families enjoyed the opportunity to get more connected and shared more information than usual. In addition, they were able to connect with more than one family member.The researchers observed some family member--adopters that were not initially interested in extra communication, however started getting comfortable with the other families gradually. The intention of the portal was multi family communication, due to differences in schedules synchronous communication was low. However, the families left messages on the whiteboard to share with all. Families also used the whiteboard for playing.
Most families left the video on and did not have any privacy concerns. Four individuals did not like the use of the system, because it was intrusive, or from fear of technology, or they were not interested in additonal communication. To manage privacy, the family portal was turned facing a wall when not intended for communication rather then switching off.

Review:
I like the idea of the family portal, as i skype with my parents and sisters separately. I even like the use of the whiteboard, because you can leave messages there for everyone to see and know if something important is going on. Though this will not raise privacy issues with my family, but yes incase i use it with my in-laws. However, i wonder if you need a separate device for it, i wonder if it was computer application or part of facebook, what the results will be. I can see myself using it to communicate with a bunch of old friends, or cousins to discuss an upcoming wedding….