What do people want from the technology in their homes: Work at the centre for usable home technology (CUHTec)

Two studies are described that illustrate how one may gain an understanding of the needs of people with very different home circumstances to one's own. The first concerns families separated by long distances, the emotions that they experience and what it would mean to re-connect them with communication technologies. The second is a study of a nunnery and the ways that a technology can be designed for people with very particular values who are living communally. The contribution of the paper is to illustrate the value of thinking more broadly about the roles of technology in the home and to indicate some ways in which this may be done.