Response: Family Portals

Summary:

Communicating with family and close friends, who live far away, was the focus of this paper. The researchers examined methods in which close-knit families could interact with each other intimately and still be in their respective locations. The examination was done by their implementation “Family Portals”, which allowed for video conferencing, messaging and a shared whiteboard. While each of these features itself is not unique, framing it for a family environment was. This system was tested in 2 different “triads” or family groups for 8 weeks total, and they found several interesting results. The results seemed to indicate that a lot of real world communication patterns transferred to the digital domain. Solitude, for instance, was further enhanced in some cases, because seeing but not being able to communicate was frustrating for one of the mothers in the triad. Further, it also allowed users to be selective (just like in real life), by physically placing the system in their ideal locations, so that family could not always see what they were doing. Overall, the paper and its finding suggested that communication in a family (or close-knit) group requires a strong need for communication amongst all the parties and that if proper adoption is done, relationship dynamics can be enhanced or created. Generalizing these results to larger families however, would be a challenge, as stated towards the end of the paper.

Response:

This was an interesting paper to me, because of the focus on long-distance family communication. Many of the primary communicators in the system were young and able to adopt the system easily. I know in my case, for some overseas family members, adopting such technology would be extremely difficult, because it would not fit socially. The most interesting result for me, in this paper, was the changed relationships because of the system. They used the whiteboard more; they were more involved in each other’s lives and most likely felt closer. In this respect, the system was a success. On the flipside, the system also allowed for family members to be “more annoyed” with each other, by not answering the “knocks”, for example. In some respects, this is limited in real life because they do not see each other ALL the time, but a constant connection removes that. I would have liked to a longer study on the system and the change in relationship dynamics. Additionally, testing the system on budding relationships would be an interesting experiment, to see if relationships can form FROM the system itself.