Telemedicine systems that involve the use of video conferencing technologies have been available for more than three decades. Yet, they have primarily been used for specialist appointments or within health care facilities. We are now seeing a shift with the proliferation of commercial technologies, such as smartphone apps that allow people to have appointments with a general practitioner from nearly any location for various reasons. Telemedicine has also seen an uptake due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, little is known about how doctors and patients perceive smartphone-based telemedicine systems, what types of medical ailments are best suited for these systems, what sociotechnical challenges might emerge through their usage, and how systems should be designed to best meet the needs of both doctors and patients. Thus, we applied a scenario-based design method by presenting a set of medical situations to both general practitioners and patients, and conducted contextual interviews with them to investigate their thoughts on video-based appointments for a range of medical situations. Results show that video consultations using smartphone apps could raise challenges in delivering appropriate care and utilization, conducting camera work to assist different types of examinations, supporting doctor–patient relationship creation and maintenance, allowing doctors to maintain control over the appointment, as well as protecting patients’ and doctors’ privacy. This suggests the need to create designs that can support particular workflows, relationship building, safety and privacy protection, and camera work for varying contexts.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, communication technologies have allowed people to maintain connections with their loved ones over distance. At the same time, we do not yet have a deep understanding of if and how communication needs amongst family and friends change as a result of physical distancing and travel restrictions and how technologies could be better designed to support these needs. For these reasons, we conducted an exploratory study to investigate the use of communication technologies and family communication needs during the first fourth months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. We used contextual interviews with 18 participants and an open-ended survey with 12 respondents. Our results show that people began the pandemic with a period of shifting and trialing new communication practices; this included increased communications with family and friends. People tried to recreate in-person situations with large group video calls beyond the typical two-household connection found pre-pandemic. This created challenges related to control and participation, and saw people explore ways to increase a sense of shared atmosphere over distance with efforts to increase physicality. Yet large amounts of technology use generally did not persist as participants abandoned many forms of online interaction over time in a form of technology detachment and sometimes cleanse. These results point to design lessons for times of extreme disconnection between family and friends, such as during a pandemic, where control, participation, and atmosphere receive deep consideration.

Family members who are separated across time zones can easily miss out on feeling connected. We designed and studied the usage of an asynchronous storytelling system, called FamilyStories, to explore the use of audio-based sharing. FamilyStories allows family members to share activities and experiences over distance in different time zones using three different devices that contain different contextual features. To evaluate the design, we conducted a five-week long field study with two family member pairs. Our results show the value of slow, flexible, and non-suggestive interfaces for asynchronous audio communication. We also found ephemerality helped in the sharing of 'instant' feelings, while large time zone differences could be 'synchronized' with time delayed messages. We raise these as design opportunities for asynchronous audio storytelling systems.

We are beginning to see changes to health care systems where patients are now able to visit their doctor using video conferencing appointments. Yet we know little of how such systems should be designed to meet patients' needs. We used a scenario-based design method with video prototyping and conducted patient-centered contextual interviews with people to learn about their reactions to futuristic video-based appointments. Results show that video-based appointments differ from face-to-face consultations in terms of accessibility, relationship building, camera work, and privacy issues. These results illustrate design challenges for video calling systems that can support video-based appointments between doctors and patients with an emphasis on providing adequate camera control, support for showing empathy, and mitigating privacy concerns.

People often enjoy sharing outdoor activities together such as walking and hiking. However, when family and friends are separated by distance it can be difficult if not impossible to share such activities. We explore this design space by investigating the benefits and challenges of using a telepresence robot to support outdoor leisure activities. In our study, participants participated in the outdoor activity of geocaching where one person geocached with the help of a remote partner via a telepresence robot. We compared a wide field of view (WFOV) camera to a 360° camera. Results show the benefits of having a physical embodiment and a sense of immersion with the 360° view. Yet challenges related to a lack of environmental awareness, safety issues, and privacy concerns resulting from bystander interactions. These findings illustrate the need to design telepresence robots with the environment and public in mind to provide an enhanced sensory experience while balancing safety and privacy issues resulting from being amongst the general public.

Families preserve memories of their special and everyday experiences, though it can be hard to capture all these moments in everyday life. We explore the concept of automated forms of capturing family life and presenting them through situated, tangible everyday artifacts in the home. We designed Time-Turner, an always-on video recording system along with a set of three drink coasters that allow family members to easily search, filter and replay videos to connect to their past. We engaged households in speculative enactments and interviews to explore the design space. Our findings point to the value of witnessing real rather than staged moments and the ways in which the affordances of everyday artifacts can allow media to be 'lived with' as a part of everyday life. Yet our design also revealed tensions around sharing and changing perceptions across time and generations. This points to design challenges around safeguarding this media and capturing 'reality' as opposed to curated content.

Telepresence attendance at academic conferences is now a reality and allows people who cannot attend in person with the opportunity to still be “present.” This is valuable for people who face accessibility challenges, cost or travel restrictions, or limited time for travel. We have deployed and studied the use of telepresence robots at three ACM conferences, Ubicomp/ISWC 2014, CSCW 2016, and CHI 2016, ranging from remote users having dedicated telepresence robots to users sharing telepresence robots both synchronously and asynchronously. In this article, we report on the telepresence offerings along with the user behaviors, experiences, and the social norms found for remote conference attendance. Our results across the studies focus around three main themes: shared vs. dedicated robot usage, identity presentation and the value and challenges associated with it; and local in-person support through proxies and instant messaging backchannels. These themes point to three different areas of design exploration for telepresence robots, pointing out the limitations of existing design solutions with respect to each theme, areas for future telepresence design work, and the value in considering varied telepresence robot solutions, including both dedicated and shared telepresence robots.

Photo and video capture is currently dominated by the use of digital cameras, often in the form of smartphones. Yet there is easily the chance that one can miss capturing a precious moment. We explored the idea of automated video recording in the home as a form of memory collection and display for families through the autobiographical design of Moments, an always-on video recording system. We iteratively designed Moments and it was used by one of the researchers and his family over a two-year period. The family found potential for the system in capturing moments that would have otherwise been forgotten in time, where they especially valued seeing "big changes" and minute details of their life. Yet tensions existed around the family's inabilities to access specific points in time, commitment to keeping the system running, and privacy. We use these benefits and concerns to suggest future research directions for always-on video recording in the home.