Technology Individuation: The Foibles of Augmented Everyday Objects

This paper presents the concept of technology individuation and explores its role in design. Individuation expresses how, over time, a technology becomes personal and intimate, unique in purpose, orchestrated in place, and how people eventually come to rely on it to sustain connection with others. We articulate this concept as a critical vantage point for designing augmented everyday objects and the Internet of Things. Individuation foregrounds aspects of habituation, routines and arrangements that through everyday practices reveal unique meaning, reflect self-identity and support agency. The concept is illustrated through three long term case studies of technology in use, involving tangible and embodied interaction with devices that afford communication, monitoring, and awareness in the home setting. The cases are analysed using Hornecker and Buur's Tangible Interaction Framework. We further extend upon this framework to better reveal the role played by personal values, history of use, and arrangements, as they develop over time in the home setting, in shaping tangible and embodied interaction with individuated technologies.

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