Video chat systems such as Skype, Google+ Hangouts, and FaceTime have been widely adopted by family members and friends to connect with one another over distance. We have conducted a corpus of studies that explore how various demographics make use of such video chat systems where this usage moves beyond the paradigm of conversational support to one in which aspects of everyday life are shared over long periods of time, sometimes in an almost passive manner. We describe and reflect on studies of longdistance couples, teenagers, and major life events, along with design research focused on new video communication systems-the Family Window, Family Portals, and Perch-that explicitly support 'alwayson video' for awareness and communication. Overall, our findings show that people highly value long-term video connections and have appropriated them in a number of different ways. Designers of future video communication systems need to consider: ways of supporting the sharing of everyday life, rather than just conversation; providing different design solutions for different locations and situations; providing appropriate audio control and feedback; and, supporting expressions of intimacy over distance.

Much ICTD research for sub-Saharan Africa has focused on how technology related interventions have aimed to incorporate marginalized communities towards global economic growth. Our work builds on this. We present results from an exploratory qualitative study on the family communication practices of family members who communicate both within and between rural, suburban, and urban settings in Kenya. Our findings reveal that family communication focuses on economic support, well-being, life advice, and everyday coordination of activities. We also outline social factors that affect family communication, including being an eldest child, having a widowed sibling, and having reduced access to technology because of gender, literacy, or one's financial situation. Lastly, we discuss new opportunities for technology design and articulate the challenges that designers will face if creating or deploying family communication technologies in Kenya.

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When a patient has a chronic illness, such as heart disease or cancer, it can be challenging for distributed family members to stay aware of the patient's health status. A variety of technologies are available to support health information sharing (e.g., phone, video chat, social media), yet we still do not have a detailed understanding of which technologies are preferred and what challenges people still face when sharing information with them. To explore this, we conducted a mixed-method study-involving a survey and in-depth interviews-with people about their health information sharing routines and preferences for different technologies. Regardless of physical distance between distributed family members, synchronous methods of communication afforded the opportunity to provide affective support while asynchronous methods of communication were deemed to be the least intrusive. With family members adopting certain roles during the treatment of chronic illnesses, our findings suggest the need to design tools that mediate sharing health information across distance and age gaps, with consideration to respecting patient privacy while sharing health information.

Mobile payment services have recently emerged in North America where users pay for items using their smartphones. Yet we have little understanding of how people are making use of them and what successes and challenges they have experienced. As a result, we conducted a diary and interview study of user behaviors, motivations, and first impressions of mobile payment services in North America in order to understand how to best design for mobile payment experiences. Participants used a variety of services, including Google Wallet, Amazon Payments, LevelUp, Square and company apps geared towards payments (e.g., Starbucks). Our findings show that users experience challenges related to mental model development, pre-purchase anxiety and trust issues, despite enjoying the gamification, ease-of-use, and support for routine purchases with mobile payments. This suggests designing a better mobile payment experience through the incorporation of users' routines and behaviors, gamification and trust mechanism development.