Paper short abstract:

The goal of this case study is to closely examine the design process of BioMinds XR, a virtual and augmented reality-based therapeutic system for stroke patients. The paper focuses on the design methods used to develop design solutions for a training (smart)home.

Paper long abstract:

Stroke is recognized as the primary cause of disability globally. Over the last ten years, the use of virtual reality (VR) in stroke rehabilitation has gained popularity, with recent studies showing that virtual environments are more effective than traditional physiotherapy. The purpose of this study is to examine the design process of BioMinds XR, a therapeutic system for adults with neurological disorders based on virtual reality, created by a Polish startup. The prototype of a virtual training (smart)home enables the simulation of various daily activities performed within the home. Unlike the current non-virtual therapy based on simple, single-element activities, this virtual training (smart)home allows patients to safely practice more complex activities both at home and in institutional contexts. The developed prototype is presently undergoing pre-clinical tests to assess its effectiveness in comparison to conventional therapy, and it is expected to be registered as a medical device next year.

I am closely examining the design process of (smart)home technologies using the case study described above. The BioMinds training (smart)home has been developed by a team of interdisciplinary experts including neuropsychologists, neurologists, physiotherapists, computer scientists, VR/AR designers, developers, and cultural studies experts, who have many years of clinical practice, scientific achievements, and experience with VR technology. Patient involvement in the process is being carried out at the pre-clinical test level, with surveys being conducted to evaluate the use of the device and individual tasks within it. Insights gained from these surveys will be used to direct possible adaptations of the device.

Paper short abstract:

Trends in home automation and the increasing use of digital technologies have led to the emergence of networked, intelligent, or smart homes. With this paper, we want to make a contribution to some methodological questions: smart home technologies ethnographic research, or ethical and gender issues.

Paper long abstract:

Trends in home automation and the increasing use of digital technologies for diverse purposes have led to the emergence of what is referred to as connected, networked, augmented, intelligent, or smart home. The increasing technologization and digitalization transforms the home by challenging dichotomies, such as human/non-human, female/male, private/public, contributing to the emergence of new forms of posthuman domesticity, in which technologies assume responsibilities and agencies formerly reserved for humans. This opens the concept of ‘smart home’ to post-humanist investigations. The paper is based on a recently started EU project on smart homes and the transformation of power dynamics through domestic space digitalization. In our subproject, we focus on the transformation of human/non-human and gendered power dynamics within different forms of household (families, couples, collaborative housing projects or co-livings).

With this paper, we want to make a substantial contribution to the following methodological questions: A. How do ethnographic approaches need to be modified to be employable for research on the use of smart home technologies? Do we need to rely more on the digital ethnography or participatory research approaches such as time use diaries and time estimates, visual methods to capture the negotiation processes of work in the household from different perspectives and constellations? B. What ethical issues need to be considered, when home is a sphere of the intimacy, the familiar, and a place of retreat from the sphere of the public? C. How gender can be systematically considered in the ethnographic approach without falling into the trap of reification?

Paper short abstract:

Imaginaries of smart homes portray a picture in which technology makes life easier in many ways. However, in everyday practice the real use often differs from that image, but good technology can only be designed with a focus on people with a realistic understanding of its use.

Paper long abstract:

In my paper I want to focus on the contrast of the imagined life in the smart home and the everyday practice of lived experience with it. With the introduction of smart home devices to the own home comes the promise to make the life of its occupants better. The devices should either make everyday life easier, for example by making it more convenient, improve security of the inhabitants and/or reduce energy consumption. The promise of simplification of life fueled by the manufactures of smart home gadgets stands in contrast to the reality of smart home usage. The devices do not only generate a benefit for the users, but also generate new work, for example in form of maintenance of the network (Strengers et al., 2019).

There is a good consideration of these imagined promises in the social sciences, what expectations are being raised. However, in contrast, there is less concrete consideration of what the actual needs of the users are. I would like to focus on this difference and will work out what the consequences of these discrepancies are.

By throwing light on this gap, it is possible to address these real issues. And make a shift in the discourse, that takes into account the real needs and problems of people and thus could be a basis for the development of a technology that is closer to the people.

Paper short abstract:

The paper juxtaposes mainstream marketing smart scenarios with literary and visual representations that subvert both the former's male-centric user perspective and clichéd feminine caregiving identity. Such depictions are conveyed through the ambivalent category of the 'wicked vestal'.

Paper long abstract:

Building up momentum, the smart home concept is gradually resembling a battleground of disparate and oftentimes mutually exclusive discourses. What seems to be at stake in this struggle, apart from the fulfilment of individual academic aspirations and commercial interests, is the acquisition of symbolic resources. These include the capacity to mold the collective imagination, foster certain values at the expense of others, and reinforce or disrupt established power dynamics. The big tech companies have over the years pushed the narrative of the smart home as the fulfilment of individualistic and hedonistic ideals, at times complemented with a neoliberal affirmation of productivity. These narratives, anchored in technophilic and progress-fetishizing Western Enlightenment thought, have been, as shown by feminist technology scholars, infused with androcentricity and biased towards the reaffirmation of conventional gender roles.

Drawing on critical cultural research, the paper juxtaposes mainstream marketing smart scenarios with literary and visual representations that subvert both the former's male-centric user perspective and clichéd feminine caregiving identity. Such depictions are conveyed through the ambivalent category of the 'wicked vestal', encompassing the instances of deviant (Margaux) and excessive (Mother of Invention) protectiveness of the smart home as well as the hybrid melding of the female body and mind with domestic technology (Not to be Known). The paper highlights the ways in which unorthodox imaginaries renegotiate modalities of gendered agency. It discusses various plot devices, such as positioning female characters as chief adopters of smart technologies and rendering feminized smart houses autonomous, self-centered agents.

Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the negative portrayal of a technologically advanced home in a popular Czechoslovak movie shot under state socialism to explore the genderedness of home and technology as possibly geopolitically contingent.

Paper long abstract:

Popular culture has probed the concepts of automation, artificial intelligence, and digitization at least since they entered the imagination of the industrial society (cf. Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein) and exploited them both in anticipation (cf. Fritz Lang; Charlie Chaplin; nostalgically Karel Zeman) or as a direct consequence of their technological development. The oft aim of popular culture imaginary has been to grasp the effects of technological developments on “the human condition”/society as a universal experience.

Yet, the expressions and consequences of innovation are always situated and materialized in time and space, and as such convey ideas about different aspects of the human condition embedded in, among other things, geopolitical and ideological contexts. Acknowledging this situatedness, the paper looks into a specific representation of smart home in the Czechoslovak movie “Co je vám, doktore?” (What´s the Matter, Doc?). Filmed in the last decade of state socialism (1984), the movie’s narrative sits well with the return to a bourgeois gender-role assignment evident both in policies and cultural expressions since the 1960s. The state socialist system stressed full-time employment of women as the manifestation of women’s liberation and the movie shows advanced contemporary domestic appliances designed to facilitate women’s work-life balance. The interpretation of the home is negative, as it rids “home” of feminine care and emotionality. The connection between smartening of home, gendered notions of home and care and their reflection in popular culture is what I would like to address in the paper and its discussion.