The Importance of Homes in Technology Research

Debby Hindus
Interval Research Corporation
hindus@interval.com

Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Stanford University January 14, 2000

In this talk, I will argus for the importance of home-related research on technology. Several important differences between researching homes and researching workplaces are described, and several issues in conducting home-related research are discussed in the context of specific research efforts. Ways to advance home-related research as a discipline are presented, including an existing course on technology design with a home focus.

Debby Hindus has been a Member of the Research Staff at Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto, CA, since 1992. Her current research interests include broadband applications in the home and wireless techologies. Ms. Hindus has co-authored several studies of novel communications technology for workplaces and homes. In 1999, Ms. Hindus taught a new Stanford course on The Design of Domestic and Consumer Technologies.. Earlier research addressed a new kind of computer-mediated communication, the audio space, and the design of user interactions within an audio space. Ms. Hindus holds an MS degree from the MIT Media Lab and a BSCS degree from the University of Michigan. While in the Media Lab’s Speech Research group, her work focused on innovative speech applications for interacting with computers.

 

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