Connecting the family with awareness systems

Awareness systems have attracted significant research interest for their potential to support interpersonalrelationships. Investigations of awareness systems for the domestic environment have suggested that suchsystems can help individuals stay in touch with dear friends or family and provide affective benefits to theirusers. Our research provides empirical evidence to refine and substantiate such suggestions. We report ourexperience with designing and evaluating the ASTRA awareness system, for connecting households andmobile family members. We introduce the concept of connectedness and its measurement through theAffective Benefits and Costs of communication questionnaire (ABC-Q). We inform results that testify thebenefits of sharing experiences at the moment they happen without interrupting potential recievers.Finally, we document the role that lightweight, picture-based communication can play in the range ofcommunication media available