Religion and spirituality (R/S) shape billions of lives, yet they remain marginal in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) research. Prior literature reviews mapped fragments of this space but missed key contributions and the lived realities of its researchers. We extend this picture through a review of 206 ACM and IEEE publications and a survey of R/S scholars in HCI (n = 19). Our analysis shows a field in transition: Research on R/S is growing slightly in volume and diversity, with design-oriented work emerging as the dominant form of engagement. Yet the ACM and IEEE corpora remain largely separate, reflecting distinct epistemic traditions. Researchers report persistent challenges, including marginalization, exposing a deeper tension in HCI: While HCI claims to center the full range of human experience, R/S experience is still treated with suspicion. Our findings call for a reconsideration: If HCI is serious about human experience, it must take R/S experiences seriously as well.

The paper proposes “speculative metaphors” as constructs for reframing and critically engaging with ideas of artificial intelligence. It identifies a broad range of AI metaphors in the wider culture and technical literature and discusses metaphor design in terms of explanation, persuasion and speculation. To explore different metaphor design strategies, we use a custom GPT to generate a large number of variants on the “artificial intelligence” metaphor. The paper contributes a conceptual framing for such speculative metaphor drawing on ideas of knowledge and understanding, fusion and synthesis, collaboration and collectives. We argue that generating speculative metaphors provides a means of thinking critically about human-AI interaction.

Although it is now well recognized that HCI must take a greater account of ethics there is little consensus about which ethical systems are most appropriate or how to incorporate them into the design process. In this paper, we contribute a Design Court workshop method where opposing legal and ethical arguments are set against one another in the form of a mock trial. We describe how we structured and enacted these workshops by combining legal thought experiments and design fiction. The paper reports findings from three Design Courts where a fictional device is the subject of litigation. These court disputations focused on issues of privacy, reciprocity and intent in rich and nuanced debate. We argue that Design Courts may be a useful method for engaging competing ethical standpoints through contested dialogue.

Recent combinations of interactive technology, humans, and water have resulted in “WaterHCI”. WaterHCI design seeks to complement the many benefits of engagement with the aquatic domain, by offering, for example, augmented reality systems for snorkelers, virtual reality in floatation tanks, underwater musical instruments for artists, robotic systems for divers, and wearables for swimmers. We conducted a workshop in which WaterHCI experts articulated the field's grand challenges, aiming to contribute towards a systematic WaterHCI research agenda and ultimately advance the field.

Design fiction has become so widely adopted that it regularly appears in contexts ranging from CEO speeches to dedicated tracks at academic conferences. However, evaluating this kind of work is difficult; it is not clear what good or bad design fiction is or what the judgment criteria should be. In this paper we assert that design fiction is a heterogeneous set of methods, and practices, able to produce a diversity of scholarly and design contributions. We argue locating these diverse practices under the single header of "design fiction" has resulted in epistemological confusion over the appropriate method of evaluation. We identify different traditions within the HCI literature-critical design; narratology and literary theory; studio-based design "crits"; user studies; scenarios and persona development; and thought experiments-to articulate a typology of evaluative frames. There is often a mismatch between the standards to which design fiction is held and the knowledge that speculative methods seek to produce. We argue that evaluating a given instance of design fiction requires us to properly select the right epistemological tool for the job.

The intersection of philosophy and HCI is a longstanding site of interest for the field that has been attracting special attention in recent years. In this paper, we present metaphysical probes (Metaprobes) as a tool for design-led philosophical inquiry. A Metaprobe is a design artifact used to study a metaphysical idea without concealing the philosophical tools mobilized by the designers or the designerly knowledge attained after deployment. We introduce the concept of a Metaphysical Workshop. This is the set of sketchy philosophical notions that a designer mobilizes in order to research a philosophical idea through design. We then present a case study that comprises: the philosophical issue under examination, the Metaprobes designed to study it, the metaphysical workshop used and the designerly insight produced. We conclude with a discussion of the potentials and weaknesses of Metaprobes in relation to other critical and speculative research-through-design practices. We aim to provide one way to make philosophies already present in design more explicit and make other philosophical concepts relevant to HCI more accessible and workable for designers.

his paper reports on design strategies for critical and experimental work that remains constructive. We report findings from a design workshop that explored the "home hub" space through "imaginary design workbooks". These feature ambiguous images and annotations written in an invented language to suggest a design space without specifying any particular idea. Many of the concepts and narratives which emerged from the workshop focused on extreme situations: some thoughtful, some dystopian, some even mythic. One of the workshop ideas was then developed with a senior social worker who works with young offenders. A "digital social worker" concept was developed and critiqued simultaneously. We draw on Foucault's history of surveillance to "defamiliarise" both the home hub technology and the current youth justice system. We argue that the dichotomy between "constructive" and "critical" design is false because design is never neutral.

HCI draws on a variety of traditions but recently there have been calls to consolidate contributions around the problems researchers set out to solve. However, with this comes the assumption that problems are tractable and certain, rather than constructed and framed by researchers. We take as a case study a Tumblr community of teen shoplifters who post on how to steal from stores, discuss shoplifting as political resistance, and share jokes and stories about the practice. We construct three different "problems" and imagine studies that might result from applying different design approaches: Design Against Crime; Critical Design and Value Sensitive Design. Through these studies we highlight how interpretations of the same data can lead to radically different design responses. We conclude by discussing problem making as a historically and politically contingent process that allow researchers to connect data and design according to certain moral and ethical principles.

What kind of stories and plots do researchers of Human Computer Interaction draw on when they make fictions? This paper applies the "basic plots" identified in the study of literature to scenarios, speculative design and design fiction. Traditional HCI scenarios employ the plot of "Overcoming the Monster" where the monster is some problem to be solved. Much of the commentary on critical, speculative or adversarial design also draws on this plot as it attempts to overcome monsters like public apathy or a lack of debate. Design Fiction more frequently takes the form of a "Voyage and Return" or a "Quest". The paper argues that a better understanding of plot and storytelling could contribute to more reflective research fiction.

In this paper we investigate how online counter-discourse is designed, deployed and orchestrated by activists to challenge dominant narratives around socio-political issues. We focus on activism related to the UK broadcast media’s negative portrayal of welfare benefit claimants; portrayals characterised as “poverty porn” by critics. Using critical discourse analysis, we explore two activist campaigns countering the TV programme Benefits Street . Through content analysis of social media, associated traditional media texts, and interviews with activists, our analysis highlights the way activists leverage the specific technological affordances of different social media and other online platforms in order to manage and configure counter-discourse activities. We reveal how activists use different platforms to carefully control and contest discursive spaces, and the ways in which they utilise both online and offline activities in combination with new and broadcast media to build an audience for their work. We discuss the challenges associated with measuring the success of counter-discourse, and how activists rely on combinations of social media analytics and anecdotal feedback in order to ascertain that their campaigns are successful. We also discuss the often hidden power-relationships in such campaigns, especially where there is ambiguity regarding the grassroots legitimacy of activism, and where effort is placed into controlling and owning the propagation of counter-discourse. We conclude by highlighting a number of areas for further work around the blurred distinctions between corporate advocacy, digilantism and grassroots activism.

As computing technologies become ubiquitous in social life, social science increasingly becomes the study of those technosystems. Similarly, as technology corporations compete to design new ubicomp products, social science research is recruited as a design method. This paper presents an interpretive bricolage, exploring the relationship between social science and corporate technology research. It draws on a specific case study: the history of ethnomethodology during the lifetime of the Xerox EuroPARC laboratory. This interpretation relates to the ways that social and organisational authority is maintained through scientific knowledge, and the ways in which interdisciplinary design research engages with product users, customers and markets.

This paper argues that comics are a powerful and valuable medium for representing research through design. We review different formats for representing design including the academic paper, the photo-essay and the annotated portfolio. We argue that the comic book form can be better suited to representing various aspects of the design process including interaction, form and aesthetics. We illustrate our argument with examples taken from a comic book about the design of Paper Street View, an interactive system, which allows users to navigate Google Street View with a paper map and brass marker. We argue that comics are well suited to capturing the dynamic process of making, the dialogue and different viewpoints that contribute to interdisciplinary work as well as the interactive and aesthetic elements of a final design.

This comic reveals multilayered details and insights about the design and making of Paper Street View, a suite of artefacts that allow groups of older people in care environments to navigate Google Street View using a paper map. In creating the comic we wanted to account for material thinking in design. We show that comics can be used as a dynamic and visual way of presenting and composing discussions about making. Comics allow you to talk around artefacts gathered during the design process (i.e. CAD drawings, prototypes, sketches and notes) and encourage a more dynamic use of image and text.

Much of the academic and commercial work which seeks to innovate around technology has been dismissed as "solutionist" because it solves problems that don't exist or ignores the complexity of personal, political and environmental issues. This paper traces the "solutionism" critique to its origins in city planning and highlights the original concern with imaging and representation in the design process. It is increasingly cheap and easy to create compelling and seductive images of concept designs, which sell solutions and presume problems. We consider a range of strategies, which explicitly reject the search for "solutions". These include design fiction and critical design but also less well-known techniques, which aim for unuseless, questionable and silly designs. We present two examples of "magic machine" workshops where participants are encouraged to reject realistic premises for possible technological interventions and create absurd propositions from lo-fi materials. We argue that such practices may help researchers resist the impulse towards solutionism and suggest that attention to representation during the ideation process is a key strategy for this.

This paper argues that design fiction is a powerful term in part because it is malleable. A wide range of differing design fictions are emerging and we pursue a spatial metaphor to provide a map based on literary approaches. Following Margaret Atwood we trace design fiction back to marvel and wonder tales such as the Arabian Nights through to the science fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth century. We suggest science, magic, ambiguity and irony as the cardinal points of design fiction. We then apply these four different approaches to design fiction to the concept of a divorce app for older people. We argue that currently design fiction is dominated by scientistic and ironic design fiction and suggest that magic and ambiguity are currently under explored.

This paper reports a qualitative study of thriving older people and illustrates the findings with design fiction. Design research has been criticized as "solutionist" i.e. solving problems that don't exist or providing "quick fixes" for complex social, political and environmental problems. We respond to this critique by presenting a "solutionist" board game used to generate design concepts. Players are given data cards and technology dice, they move around the board by pitching concepts that would support positive aging. We argue that framing concept design as a solutionist game explicitly foregrounds play, irony and the limitations of technological intervention. Three of the game concepts are presented as design fictions in the form of advertisements for products and services that do not exist. The paper argues that design fiction can help create a space for design beyond solutionism.

This paper reflects on the uses of prototypes in "Research through Design" and considers "Design Fiction" as a technique for exploring the potential value of new design work. It begins with an analysis of Research through Design abstracts in the ACM digital library and identifies an emerging language and structure of papers in this emerging field. The abstracts: frame a problem space, introduce a study, often involving the deployment of a prototype, and conclude with considerations, reflections and discussion. This format is then pastiched in a series of design fictions written for a project investigating new and emerging forms of reproduction in Art. The fictions take the form of "imaginary abstracts" which summarize findings of papers that have not been written about prototypes that do not exist. It is argued that framing concept designs as fictional studies can provide a space for research focused critique and development.

Delegation is the practice of sharing authority with another individual to enable them to complete a specific task as a proxy. Practices to permit delegation can range from formal to informal arrangements and can involve spontaneous yet finely balanced notions of trust between people. This paper argues that delegation is a ubiquitous yet an unsupported feature of socio-technical computer systems and that this lack of support illustrates a particular neglect to the everyday financial practices of the more vulnerable people in society. Our contribution is to provide a first exploration of the domain of person-to-person delegation in digital payments, a particularly pressing context. We first report qualitative data collected across several studies concerning banking practices of individuals over 80 years of age. We then use analytical techniques centred upon identification of stakeholders, their concerns and interactions, to characterize the delegation practices we observed. We propose a Concerns Matrix as a suitable representation to capture conflicts in the needs of individuals in such complex socio-technical systems, and finally propose a putative design response in the form of a Helper Card.

The paper reflects on three approaches to the dissemination and display of digital art. \'1c"s[edition]\'1d" is a novel, web-based service that offers limited editions of "\'1cdigital prints"\'1d. Analysis of user comments suggests that the metaphor of a \'1c"limited digital edition"\'1d raises issues and to some extent is resisted. The second approach is the Flickr Brushes Gallery, where digital painters post images and comment on one another's work. Analysis of comment boards indicates that the shared art and comments are a form of gift exchange. Finally, the paper discusses a field study in which artists exhibited their work as it develops over time in digital frames and also in an immersive digital projection room. Analysis of field notes and interviews indicate that the digital frame approach was unsuccessful because of aesthetic and environmental concerns. The immersive projection suggested that more experiential approaches may be more interesting. It is argued that there is an inherent resistance in digital media to previous models of art commoditization. None of the approaches discussed here resolve the dilemma but rather indicate the scope and complexity of the issues.

HCI researchers working in publically funded institutions are increasingly encouraged to engage the public in their research. Mass media is often seen as an effective medium with which to communicate research to large parts of the population. We present an account of three HCI projects that have used engagements with mass media in order to communicate research to the public. We describe the motivations for working with mass media and the mechanics of writing press releases. A grounded theory analysis of online public responses to the projects in the mass media leads us to identify a number of concerns about how research is portrayed by news outlets and thus interpreted by the public. Tensions about technologies and wider societal issues were revealed that might normally be hidden when using traditional user-centred methods. We critically reflect on the efficacy of using the mass media in research and provide guidance for HCI researchers wishing to engage in dialogues with the public in the future.

The paper reports on the growing phenomena of art-making on mobile devices and contributes findings from two studies of artists' responses to iPad painting apps: the first is a series of exploratory workshops where artists were recruited to engage with a range of art apps, the second is a series of in-depth interviews with two artists who had incorporated the device and Brushes app into their painting practice over a period of months and years. The artists in both studies generally agreed that the devices and apps were easy to use and enjoyable but remained ambivalent about the technologies and outcomes. Although there was excitement around new creative possibilities there were also tensions around the status of the work being produced. The paper reflects on the role of popular digital production apparatus and information exchange on the constitution of artist-identities at a time of rapid techno-cultural change. It argues that while tablet computing and art apps have democratized certain artistic processes these technologies have generated conflict with traditional conceptions of art and curation.

Invisible Design is a technique for generating insights and ideas with workshop participants in the early stages of concept development. It involves the creation of ambiguous films in which characters discuss a technology that is not directly shown. The technique builds on previous work in HCI on scenarios, persona, theatre, film and ambiguity. The Invisible Design approach is illustrated with three examples from unrelated projects; Biometric Daemon, Panini and Smart Money. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of data from a series of workshops where these Invisible Designs were discussed. The analysis outlines responses to the films in terms of; existing problems, concerns with imagined technologies and design speculation. It is argued that Invisible Design can help to create a space for critical and creative dialogue during participatory concept development.

The design of technological interventions to motivate behaviour-based reductions in end-user energy consumption has recently been identified as a priority for the HCI community. Previous interventions have produced promising results, but have typically focused on domestic energy consumption. By contrast, this paper focuses on the workplace context, which presents very different opportunities and challenges. For instance, financial consequences, which have proved successful as motivations in the domestic environment, are not present in the workplace in the context of employees. We describe the outcome of a sequence of workshops that focussed on understanding employee perceptions of energy use in the workplace, with the locus of activity on energy intervention design. Using a grounded theory analysis, we produced a framework of key themes detailing user perceptions and energy intervention design considerations. Our findings provide a framework of considerations for the design of successful workplace energy interventions.

This paper describes a project exploring the design of digital payment services in collaboration with 16 people aged over 80. Many older people find cheques valuable as a means of payment but the UK Payments Council recently proposed their abolition. We describe two designs that simultaneously aimed to preserve and augment the paper cheque as a means of making electronic payments. These were devised during participatory design workshops through critical dialogues with our eighty something participants. Workshop discussions resulted in the creation of a real world cheque system where we issued pre-paid cheques without the involvement of banks. This work informed the development of a digital cheque book based on Anoto digital pen technology. The work illustrates the value of participatory design with 'extraordinary' users, such as the eighty somethings, in HCI.

This paper reports findings from a series of participatory design workshops with ten people over eighty years old. The focus of the workshops was new banking technologies for the older old. Participants were asked to discuss their current experiences of banking and given packs of concept cards which contained design sketches and brief outlines of concepts for new financial services. The designs on the cards were deliberately provocative and aimed to encourage criticism and debate. Participants wrote and drew on the cards and the workshops were recorded and transcribed. The participants were extremely critical of current banking practices and most of the new concepts we presented to them. Their questions and comments led to a number of insights and further iterations. The paper argues that critique is an essential resource for design, both in terms of identifying problems and iterating ideas.

A cheque is a paper document that orders the transfer of money between bank accounts. Whilst an eighty-year-old in the UK is predicted on average to live at least another ten years, cheques may not. Despite many older peoples extensive use of cheques, UK banks are eager to abolish them and design electronic alternatives that are less costly to process and less vulnerable to fraud. This paper reports on two qualitative studies that explored the banking experiences of 23 people over eighty years old. Cheques support financial collaboration with others in ways that digital payment systems do not. We argue that whilst it might be possible to improve the design of digital payment systems to better support financial collaboration, the case for retaining and enhancing cheques is stronger. Rather than replace cheques, we must design ways of making them less costly to process and better linked to electronic payment methods.

This paper reports findings from a multi-method set of four studies that investigate why we continue to fall for phish. Current security advice suggests poor spelling and grammar in emails can be signs of phish. But a content analysis of a phishing archive indicates that many such emails contain no obvious spelling or grammar mistakes and often use convincing logos and letterheads. An online survey of 224 people finds that although phish are detected approximately 80% of the time, those with logos are significantly harder to detect. A qualitative interview study was undertaken to better understand the strategies used to identify phish. Blind users were selected because it was thought they may be more vulnerable to phishing attacks, however they demonstrated robust strategies for identifying phish based on careful reading of emails. Finally an analysis was undertaken of phish as a literary form. This identifies the main literary device employed as pastiche and draws on critical theory to consider why security based pastiche may be currently very persuasive.

The Photostroller is a device designed for use by residents of a care home for older people. It shows a continuous slideshow of photographs retrieved from the Flickr™ image website using a set of six predefined categories modified by a tuneable degree of 'semantic drift'. In this paper, we describe the design process that led to the Photostroller, and summarise observations made during a deployment in the care home that has lasted over two months at the time of writing. We suggest that the Photostroller balances constraint with openness, and control with drift, to provide an effective resource for the ludic engagement of a diverse group of older people with each other and the world outside their home.

The "older old" (people over eighty) are a largely invisible group for those not directly involved in their lives; this project explores the ways that technology might strengthen links between different generations. This paper describes findings from a two-year study of a residential care home and develops the notion of cross-generational engagement through ludic systems which encourage curiosity and playfulness. It outlines innovative ways of engaging the older old through "digital curios" such as Bloom, the Tenori On and Google Earth. The use of these curios was supplemented with portraiture by three local artists, nine school children and the field researcher. The paper describes four technological interventions: "video window", "projected portraiture", "blank canvas", and "soundscape radio". These interventions attempt to reposition "off the shelf technologies to provide a space for cross-generational engagement The notion of inter-passivity (the obverse of interaction) is explored in relation to each intervention.

In this paper we describe the Prayer Companion, a device we developed as a resource for the spiritual activity of a group of cloistered nuns. The device displays a stream of information sourced from RSS news feeds and social networking sites to suggest possible topics for prayers. The nuns have engaged with the device enthusiastically over the first ten months of an ongoing deployment, and, notwithstanding some initial irritation with the balance of content, report that it plays a significant and continuing role in their prayer life. We discuss how we balanced specificity in the design with a degree of openness for interpretation to create a resource that the nuns could both understand and appropriate, describe the importance of materiality to the device's successful adoption, consider its implications as a design for older people, and reflect on the example it provides of how computation may serve spirituality.

Sites like YouTube offer vast sources of data for studies of human computer interaction. However, they also present a number of methodological challenges. This paper offers an example study of the initial reception of the iPhone 3G through YouTube. It begins with a quantitative account of the overall shape of the most frequently viewed returns for an iPhone 3G" search. A content analysis of the first hundred videos then explores the returns categorized by genre. Comments on the most popular video "Will It Blend"are analysed using grounded theory. It is argued that social science methods are not sufficient for a rich understanding of such material. The paper concludes with an analysis of"Will it Blend"that draws on cultural and critical theory. It is argued that a multi-methodological approach is necessary to exploit such data and also to address the challenges of next generation Human Computer Interaction (HCI).

This paper reports the findings from quantitative and qualitative studies of Riot! - a location-sensitive interactive play for voices. The paper begins by introducing Riot!; it then explores the growing literature on theories of experience and goes on to report the findings from three empirical studies of the event: a questionnaire-based survey of 563 participants; 30 semi-structured interviews with groups and individuals; and in-depth ethnographic case studies of four participants. It was clear from the survey that most people had enjoyed Riot! However, the interview data demonstrated that they had also experienced frustration even where overall enjoyment ratings were high. This is explored in relation to perception of the system and goal definition. The ethnographic case studies identify barriers to engagement in terms of individual identity and orientation. A critical theory-based analysis of Riot! further explicates the user experience in terms of literary devices such as characterisation and the development of narrative expectation.The studies identify a number of usability problems such as inconsistency of interaction and non-reversibility that caused frustration. The critical analysis also identifies problems with the script such as the presentation of linear narrative in a non-linear medium. It accounts for widely differing accounts of the experience with reference to the participant's individual orientations or habitus. The paper demonstrates the value of an interdisciplinary approach for exploring the commonality and particularity of user experience.

Pastiche scenarios draw on fiction as a resource to explore the interior ‘felt-life’ aspects of user experience and the complex social and cultural issues raised by technological innovations. This paper sets out an approach for their use, outlining techniques for the location of source material and presenting three case studies of pastiche scenario use. The first case study is an evaluation of the Apple iPod that explores the socio-cultural meanings of the technology. The second case study focuses on the participatory design of Net Neighbours, an online shopping system where volunteers shop as intermediaries for older people who do not have access to computers. The third is an in depth consideration of a conceptual design, the ‘cambadge’ a wearable lightweight web cam which, upon activation broadcasts to police or public websites intended to reduce older people’s fear of crime. This design concept is explored in depth in pastiche scenarios of the Miss Marple stories, A Clockwork Orange and Nineteen Eighty-four that reflect on how the device might be experienced not only by users but also by those it is used against. It is argued that pastiche scenarios are a useful complementary method for designers to reason about user experience as well as the broad social and cultural impacts of new technologies.

This paper describes the development of Net Neighbours, an online shopping scheme that widens Internet access to older people via volunteer telephone intermediaries. It outlines the processes of: problem identification, designing the telephone interaction, the financial model and the interface for the volunteer. It describes the application and adaptation of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) techniques to address the needs of the local charity that co-developed the scheme. The paper begins by reporting the ethnographic work that led to the scheme; it then describes the pilot study conducted with Age Concern, York. It maps the various possible configurations for the scheme in a series of financial models expressed in tree diagrams and goes on to describe the use of pastiche scenarios in developing designs. Pastiche scenarios draw on fiction as a resource to explore, in an engaging manner, the social issues raised by technological innovations; the paper presents extracts from three such scenarios that were used to reason about dependability issues with Age Concern staff. The scheme is ongoing and plans are currently being made to extend it by recruiting university staff and other office workers as volunteer intermediaries. It is hoped that the scheme will become widely available across the city and in other locations around the UK. It is argued that volunteer telephone intermediaries can bridge digital divides and make Internet services accessible to those excluded either by age, disability or lack of resources. The development of the scheme is a case study in the ways that HCI techniques can be adopted and adapted in order to design for civil society. 1

This paper considers the needs of an ageing population and the implications for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research. The discussion is structured around findings from interviews with medical and care professionals and older people. Various technologies are being successfully used to monitor for falls and other emergencies, and also to assess and manage risk. The design of this technology is currently driven by a medical model of client needs and takes little account of the social context of the home. The design challenges for HCI are to make this technology attractive, provide privacy, allow informed choice and reduce rather than increase the isolation currently felt by many older people. It is argued that the ageing population presents a fundamental challenge to HCI in the need for socially dependable systems. Socially dependable systems take account of social context, the need for sociability and are accessible to all who need them.

This article argues that because the home is so familiar, it is necessary to make it strange, or defamiliarize it, in order to open its design space. Critical approaches to technology design are of both practical and social importance in the home. Home appliances are loaded with cultural associations such as the gendered division of domestic labor that are easy to overlook. Further, homes are not the same everywhere---even within a country. Peoples' aspirations and desires differ greatly across and between cultures. The target of western domestic technology design is often not the user, but the consumer. Web refrigerators that create shopping lists, garbage cans that let advertisers know what is thrown away, cabinets that monitor their contents and order more when supplies are low are central to current images of the wireless, digital home of the future. Drawing from our research in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Asia, we provide three different narratives of defamiliarization. A historical reading of American kitchens provides a lens with which to scrutinize new technologies of domesticity, an ethnographic account of an extended social unit in England problematizes taken-for-granted domestic technologies, and a comparative ethnography of the role of information and communication technologies in the daily lives of urban Asia's middle classes reveals the ways in which new technologies can be captured and domesticated in unexpected ways. In the final section of the article, we build on these moments of defamiliarization to suggest a broad set of challenges and strategies for design in the home.

Sixty four members of the public were exposed to the same staged conversation either while waiting in a bus station or travelling on a train. Half of the conversations were by mobile phone, so that only one end of the conversation was heard, and half were co present face-to-face conversations. The volume of the conversations was controlled at one of two levels: the actors' usual speech level and exaggeratedly loud. Following exposure to the conversation participants were approached and asked to give verbal ratings on six scales. Analysis of variance showed that mobile phone conversations were significantly more noticeable and annoying than face-to-face conversations at the same volume when the content of the conversation is controlled. Indeed this effect of medium was as large as the effect of loudness. Various explanations of this effect are explored, with their practical implications.