The Heterogeneous Home
Ryan Aipperspach
GoodGuide.com | ryanaip@alumni.rice.edu
Ben Hooker
Art Center College of Design | ben.hooker@gmail.com
Allison Woodruff
Intel Research Berkeley | woodruff@acm.org
In the course of conducting
research on domestic life [ 1],
we have visited and conducted
observations in a number
of U.S. homes. Within these
homes, we have often observed
a certain homogeneity, a tendency toward similarity in
place and experience. Our
sense of a sometimes uniform
and undifferentiated domestic
environment resonates with
observations made by others as
well. For example, the modern
housing landscape has been
critiqued as offering limited
variation in internal form and
structure compared with the
diversity of household populations [ 2, 3]. Homes with uniform
construction, ceiling height,
and lighting are symptomatic of
designs that deal with economic
constraints by being larger and
undifferentiated, rather than
smaller but more differentiated
[ 4]. Additionally, fundamental
domestic infrastructure, such
as central heating and cooling
systems that deliver a consistent climate throughout the
home, reinforces the assumption that the domestic environment should be consistent and
homogeneous.
Even in spatially complex
homes, pervasive technology
often provides access to the
same “virtual environment”
throughout the home, creating
a homogeneous environment
as viewed through the screen.
Televisions playing in multiple
rooms can create similar landscapes throughout the home.
Further, devices such as time-shifting television recorders
can subtly homogenize the
experience of time by reducing
the salience of external temporal structures such as network television schedules [ 5].
“Anytime, anywhere” networks
and devices such as cellular
and smart phones can also blur
boundaries between work and
home, as well as boundaries
within the home. Laptops and
PDAs connected wirelessly to
the office may be placed on a
bedside table, providing access
to work late at night, and for
many people, the experience of
truly “coming home from work”
is a rare one.
Increased homogeneity in the
domestic environment plainly
offers attractions such as convenience. For example, uniform
access to data and network
services offers residents the
handy ability to compute in any
room in the home and to be near
family members while they are
working. However, this is a double-edged sword, resonating with
concerns of McDonaldization—
the process by which modern
society takes on the characteristics of a fast-food restaurant [ 6].
While standardized and uniform
services are convenient and
seductive, they are also often
associated with limited variation and reduced quality. These
issues resonate with our own
intuition, based on our experience with design and observation, that homogeneity is often
associated with a less fulfilling
domestic experience.
Findings from environmental psychology and restorative
environment theory also suggest
potential disadvantages of homogeneous home environments
[ 7]. Restorative environments
are important for reducing
mental fatigue resulting from
stressful situations or intense
thought, and inspection of the
characteristics of restorative
environments suggests that
homogeneous domestic environments may not be sufficiently
restorative. As Tabor writes,
digital screens are “sleepless,
fidgety, and demanding [ 8].” They
“discourage that mental state of
still coherence—achieved when
we stare into a flame, gaze idly
from a window or watch shadows lengthen—which rebuilds
the self.”
[ 1] Woodruff, A.,
K. Anderson, S. D.
Mainwaring, and R.
Aipperspach. “Portable,
But Not Mobile: A
Study of Wireless
Laptops in the Home.”
In Pervasive Computing
5th International
Conference, Pervasive
2007, Toronto, Canada,
May 13-16, 2007, edited
by A. LaMarca, M.
Langheinrich, and K. N.
Truong, 216-233. New
York: Springer, 2007.
[ 2] Ahrentzen, S.
“Choice in Housing.”
Harvard Design
Magazine 8 (summer
1999): 1-6.
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In Decoding Homes
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Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003.
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Thinking. New York:
Harper Collins, 2006.
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New York: ACM Press,
2006.
[ 6] Ritzer, G. The
McDonaldization of
Society. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Pine Forge
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[ 7] Kaplan, R. and
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Experience of Nature:
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Cambridge: Cambridge
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[ 8] Tabor, P. “Striking
Home: The Telematic
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In J. Hill’s Occupying
Architecture. London:
Routledge, 1998.