“My Roomba Is Rambo”: Intimate Home Appliances
Bibliography
Sung, J.-Y., Guo, L., Grinter, R. E., & Christensen, H. I. (2007). “My Roomba Is Rambo”: Intimate Home Appliances. In J. Krumm, G. D. Abowd, A. Seneviratne, & T. Strang (Eds.), UbiComp 2007: Ubiquitous Computing (pp. 145–162). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74853-3_9
Abstract
Robots have entered our domestic lives, but yet, little is known about their impact on the home. This paper takes steps towards addressing this omission, by reporting results from an empirical study of iRobot’s RoombaTM, a vacuuming robot. Our findings suggest that, by developing intimacy to the robot, our participants were able to derive increased pleasure from cleaning, and expended effort to fit Roomba into their homes, and shared it with others. These findings lead us to propose four design implications that we argue could increase people’s enthusiasm for smart home technologies.
People form intimate relationships with their Roombas. I found the term and process of Roombarization especially interesting. I describes the effort and practice of preparing the space for the Roomba in order for it to not malfunction or have it easier to do its job. The paper crystalizes and supports four design implications of interests.
Form follows function? The Roomba was not built to imitate bio life in order for the user to form an intimate relationship with it.
Intimacy through ambiguity The Roomba’s actions and functions needed to be explorer by the users and could not easily be predicted. This on is similar to Betti Marenko’s design principle of uncertainty [@marenkoAnimisticDesignHow2016].
Intimacy through accountability The user saw into the workings of the Roomba by being able to directly see it do its job.
Intimacy through support Roomba directly support its users, especially in terms of social values or if the users had disabilities.