Sensing Their Presence: How Emerging Adults And Their Parents Connect After Moving Apart

Document Title

Sensing Their Presence: How Emerging Adults And Their Parents Connect After Moving Apart

Document Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), family relationships, and communication technology design
• Keywords: parents, emerging adults, passive co-presence, perceived presence, co-design study, remote communication

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  • When emerging adults first move out of their parents' homes, their sense of connection and shared presence with their parents changes.
  • Existing communication methods, such as video calls or text-based communication, fail to replicate the passive connection experienced when sharing a physical space (e.g., hearing family members moving around in the kitchen).
  • Parents and emerging adults have differing communication needs (e.g., privacy, frequency, goals), which are not adequately addressed in current technology designs.

• Significance:

  • Maintaining a positive connection between emerging adults and their parents has a beneficial impact on the mental and physical health of young adults, such as reducing risky drinking behaviors and promoting higher activity levels.
  • There is a lack of research on the specific needs of parents and emerging adults in remote communication technologies, particularly on how to design technologies that support passive co-presence.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • Baldassar's Concept: Discusses "imagined co-presence" and "proxy co-presence," which refer to feeling connected to family through memories and objects. This study introduces the new concept of "passive co-presence," defined as a sense of connection achieved through perception without direct interaction.
  • Related Technologies: Existing research has explored the advantages of synchronous communication (video calls) and asynchronous communication (messaging apps) but lacks designs tailored to the specific needs of parents and emerging adults.

Solution

• Proposed Solution:

  1. Introducing Passive Co-Presence: Exploring how the senses of sound, sight, smell, touch, and taste shape remote shared presence.
  2. Co-Design Study: Conducting in-depth interviews, home activity recordings, and brainstorming design sessions with 16 parent-emerging adult pairs.

• Innovative Contributions:

  • Proposed a conceptual model based on the "five senses" to study the perception process of passive connection.
  • Developed a set of design principles for small tools that integrate privacy, family memories, and active interaction.

• Implementation Steps:

  1. Interviews and Cultural Background Recording: Gaining an in-depth understanding of communication habits and challenges between parents and children.
  2. Home Reflection Activities: Daily questionnaires and task recordings to capture family co-presence experiences through different sensory perceptions.
  3. Design Workshops: Conducting separate sessions for parents and emerging adults to guide them in proposing and discussing innovative design concepts.
  4. Follow-Up Interviews: Collecting feedback from both groups on the proposed design solutions.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:

  • Different sensory modalities played distinct roles in fostering connection, such as auditory cues (e.g., everyday household sounds), visual elements (e.g., objects left at home), olfactory cues (e.g., familiar household smells), tactile sensations (e.g., the texture of items), and taste (e.g., family recipes and shared meals).
  • Proposed three key principles for designing passive connection technologies:
    1. Support Nostalgia and Comfort (e.g., evoking olfactory memories);
    2. Share Multi-Sensory Environmental Atmospheres (e.g., recreating shared spatial experiences through sound and smell);
    3. Design Mediated by Keepsakes and Memorabilia.

• Comparison with Existing Solutions:

  • Most current remote communication technologies focus on active interaction, such as video calls or messaging. This study emphasizes low-intrusion designs that do not require active communication, enhancing independence while respecting privacy.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • During the co-design process, both parents and children agreed that olfactory and auditory senses were the most effective in fostering passive connection and proposed specific designs (e.g., scent-dispensing devices, "sound windows" for family environments).
  • Some sensory modalities (e.g., touch) require clearly defined user consent mechanisms.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Sample Characteristics: All young participants were students who moved out for educational reasons. Future studies should include broader contexts (e.g., young adults moving out for work or independent living).
  • Cultural Differences: This study did not deeply explore the impact of cultural backgrounds on parent-child communication, especially in cross-national or cross-cultural families.
  • Potential Privacy and Misuse Risks: Passive connection designs could be misused for surveillance, necessitating careful consideration of user permissions and data security.

Conclusion

This study deepens the understanding of the needs of parent-child relationships in technology-supported environments, introduces the design paradigm of passive co-presence, and suggests extending this model to broader populations and more efficient technologies, achieving a seamless integration of technology and emotional support.