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FamilyFlower: an Artifical Flower to Foster Distant Family Connections

Published: 25 February 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Modern, globalized lifestyles make physical separation of family members an inevitable part of life. Due to changes in routines and social roles, remaining connected to distant loved ones is challenging and adversely affects psychological well-being. To support relatedness, we created FamilyFlower, an artificial flower aimed at fostering a connection between remote households by bringing awareness of everyday activities and offering basic expressivity. In its environment, each device detects human presence, movement, sound, and touch. In the remote household, the paired prototype responds by respectively opening the flower bud, actuating the stem, altering the seeds’ color, and dispensing a fragrance. In a 2-week study of deployment between 2 family members, we collected initial impressions of our prototype, and identified key aspects our system could support in future research. From our results, we see that FamilyFlower supports an awareness of ongoing activities in a distant household and built a feeling of connectedness.

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Cited By

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  • (2025)The effect of empathy on remote social connections via paired robotsPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.031624020:1(e0316240)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2025
  • (2024)EcoMeal: Gamified Eco-Feedback of Food Consumption using a Virtual GardenCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678795(43-49)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
  • (2024)CoRoot: A Collaborative Planting System to Support Connection between Grandparents and Young AdultsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661589(1453-1468)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
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    Published In

    cover image ACM Other conferences
    MUM '21: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia
    December 2021
    263 pages
    ISBN:9781450386432
    DOI:10.1145/3490632
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 25 February 2022

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    Author Tags

    1. ambient interfaces
    2. connectedness
    3. empathic living media
    4. internet of things

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    MUM 2021

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 190 of 465 submissions, 41%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2025)The effect of empathy on remote social connections via paired robotsPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.031624020:1(e0316240)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2025
    • (2024)EcoMeal: Gamified Eco-Feedback of Food Consumption using a Virtual GardenCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678795(43-49)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
    • (2024)CoRoot: A Collaborative Planting System to Support Connection between Grandparents and Young AdultsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661589(1453-1468)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
    • (2024)Passive Co-presence: Exploring How Peripheral Devices Connect People Over DistanceExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651126(1-6)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Guttation Sensor: Wearable Microfluidic Chip for Plant Condition Monitoring and DiagnosisExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651087(1-9)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Exploring the design of physical artefacts to visualise household consumption for encouraging sustainable practicesBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2024.239867343:14(3356-3370)Online publication date: 18-Sep-2024
    • (2023)Growing Green Habits: Unobtrusive Gamified Eco-Feedback to Motivate Sustainable BehaviorProceedings of Mensch und Computer 202310.1145/3603555.3608544(454-459)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2023
    • (2023)"This machine is for the aides": Tailoring Voice Assistant Design to Home Health Care WorkProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581118(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023

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