The Haunted House: Networking Smart Homes to Enable Casual Long-Distance Social Interactions
Meghan Clark, Prabal Dutta

Citation
Meghan Clark, Prabal Dutta. "The Haunted House: Networking Smart Homes to Enable Casual Long-Distance Social Interactions". The 2015 International Workshop on Internet of Things towards Applications (IoT-App'15), 1, November, 2015.

Abstract
Despite the dominance of social networking and communications in nearly every aspect of our digital lives, little work has been done to examine the unique contributions that networked smart homes can make in the space of technologically-mediated human interaction. In this work, we introduce an application called "ghosting" that turns a smart and connected home into a socially-connected home. We show that unlike direct teleconferencing, the Internet of Things supports more subtle, ambient, and incidental exchanges that can make an environment feel co-inhabited by a person who may be many miles away.

Ghosting synchronizes audio and lighting between two homes on a room-by-room basis. Microphones in each room transmit audio to the corresponding room in the other home, unifying the ambient sound domains of the two homes. For example, a user cooking in their kitchen transmits sounds out of speakers in the other user's own kitchen. The lighting context in corresponding rooms is also synchronized. A light toggled in one house toggles the lights in the other house in real time. We claim that this system allows for casual interactions that feel natural and intimate because they share context and require less social effort than a teleconference or phone call. We describe the design points of the system and explore the successes and limitations of the ghosting user experience by implementing and deploying a ghosting application in two different settings.

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Citation formats  
  • HTML
    Meghan Clark, Prabal Dutta. <a
    href="http://www.terraswarm.org/pubs/617.html"
    >The Haunted House: Networking Smart Homes to Enable
    Casual Long-Distance Social Interactions</a>, The 2015
    International Workshop on Internet of Things towards
    Applications (IoT-App'15), 1, November, 2015.
  • Plain text
    Meghan Clark, Prabal Dutta. "The Haunted House:
    Networking Smart Homes to Enable Casual Long-Distance Social
    Interactions". The 2015 International Workshop on
    Internet of Things towards Applications (IoT-App'15), 1,
    November, 2015.
  • BibTeX
    @inproceedings{ClarkDutta15_HauntedHouseNetworkingSmartHomesToEnableCasualLongDistance,
        author = {Meghan Clark and Prabal Dutta},
        title = {The Haunted House: Networking Smart Homes to
                  Enable Casual Long-Distance Social Interactions},
        booktitle = {The 2015 International Workshop on Internet of
                  Things towards Applications (IoT-App'15)},
        day = {1},
        month = {November},
        year = {2015},
        abstract = {Despite the dominance of social networking and
                  communications in nearly every aspect of our
                  digital lives, little work has been done to
                  examine the unique contributions that networked
                  smart homes can make in the space of
                  technologically-mediated human interaction. In
                  this work, we introduce an application called
                  "ghosting" that turns a smart and connected home
                  into a socially-connected home. We show that
                  unlike direct teleconferencing, the Internet of
                  Things supports more subtle, ambient, and
                  incidental exchanges that can make an environment
                  feel co-inhabited by a person who may be many
                  miles away. <p>Ghosting synchronizes audio and
                  lighting between two homes on a room-by-room
                  basis. Microphones in each room transmit audio to
                  the corresponding room in the other home, unifying
                  the ambient sound domains of the two homes. For
                  example, a user cooking in their kitchen transmits
                  sounds out of speakers in the other user's own
                  kitchen. The lighting context in corresponding
                  rooms is also synchronized. A light toggled in one
                  house toggles the lights in the other house in
                  real time. We claim that this system allows for
                  casual interactions that feel natural and intimate
                  because they share context and require less social
                  effort than a teleconference or phone call. We
                  describe the design points of the system and
                  explore the successes and limitations of the
                  ghosting user experience by implementing and
                  deploying a ghosting application in two different
                  settings.},
        URL = {http://terraswarm.org/pubs/617.html}
    }
    

Posted by Christopher Brooks on 21 Sep 2015.

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