Interaction design for supporting communication between Chinese sojourners

Abstract

In our global village, distance is not a barrier anymore for traveling. People experience new cultures and face accompanying difficulties in order to live anywhere. Social support can help these sojourners to cope with difficulties, such as culture shock. In this paper, we investigate how computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools can facilitate social support when living physically separated from loved-ones in different cultures. The goal is to understand the design considerations necessary to design new CMC tools. We studied communication practices of Chinese sojourners living in the Netherlands and the use of a technology probe with a novel video communication system. These results led to recommendations which can help designers to design interactive communication tools that facilitate communication across cultures. We conclude the paper with an interactive communication device called Circadian, which was designed based on these recommendations. We experienced the design recommendations to be abstract enough to leave space for creativity while providing a set of clear requirements which we used to base design decisions upon.

A future-proof past: Designing for remembering experiences

“…Mementos (physical artifacts) are also flexible in use in terms of communicating memories, but are often fixed to a certain location, for example, the home, while we carry our photos with us on our laptops, tablets and mobile phones. However, when people want to share more precise details or information of recent events instead, video might be the more suitable media type, like in Bhömer and Hoven (2013).…”