Research
• MEGACHURCH PASTORS, LAITY, AND TECHNOLOGY USE
• RELIGION AND TECHNOLOGY USE IN NAIROBI, KENYA
• SUN DIAL: EXPLORING TECHNO-SPIRITUAL DESIGN THROUGH A MOBILE ISLAMIC CALL TO PRAYER APPLICATION
Thesis Research
CHURCH SHARE: INVESTIGATING TECHNOLOGY USE AND ADOPTION AMONG CULTURALLY DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS GROUPS
Outside the workplace, technologies support a new range of activities such as exploring, wondering, loving, and worshipping. Yet, we know little about how individuals appropriate technology to support these activities. Understanding this becomes more pressing as computing’s presence increases in daily life. For my dissertation, I am investigating use of ICTs to support a subset of these activities, those related to religious aspects of life, or techno-spiritual practices.
I focus on techno-spiritual practices within a specific faith and their worship settings — Protestant Christianity and megachurches. I conducted formative studies investigating how megachurches, their pastors, and their laity use ICTs for religious purposes in Atlanta, Ga., U.S., Nairobi, Kenya, and São Paulo, Brazil. Findings from these studies motivated an ICT intervention called ChurchShare, a photo-sharing site that allows laity to take digital photographs and share them with others during church worship services. I hypothesize that this technology will increase laity involvement in worship services and
create new socialization styles among megachurch laity.
I am exploring this technology through real world deployments. Research conducted in the U.S. primarily informed ChurchShare’s development; however, I draw from knowledge gained during fieldwork conducted abroad when evaluating ChurchShare. Specifically, I will ask individuals from three culturally distinct churches to use the site. One church will be comprised of U.S. born laity and the others will have predominately immigrant Kenyan and Brazilian worshippers. This will allow me to investigate how culturally different groups appropriate technology for religious purposes. In turn, this will lead to a broader understanding ICT adoption among individuals typically targeted by HCI researchers and ones who are not. This research is expected to yield empirical and theoretical findings that will contribute to human-centered computing research.
Related Documents
Wyche, S. (2008). "ChurchShare: Investigating Technology use and Adoption among Culturally Different Religious Groups." Unpublished Thesis Proposal. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. [PDF] [PRESENTATION]
Wyche, S.P. (2008). "Investigating Design for Global Techno-Spiritual Practices." In Extended Abstracts, CSCW 2008: ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, San Diego, Ca., November, 2008. [PDF]
MEGACHURCH PASTORS, LAITY, AND TECHNOLOGY USE
Wyche, S.P. and Grinter, R.E. (2009). "Extraordinary Computing: Using Religion as a Lens for Reconsidering the Home." (to appear) Proc. ACM SIGCHI Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Boston, Mass. (Acceptance Rate: 25%) [PDF]
Wyche, S., Hayes, G., Harvel, L., and Grinter, R.E. (2006). "Technology in Spiritual Formation: An Exploratory Study of Computer Mediated Religious Communications.” In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW '06), Banff, Canada, November 4-8. (Acceptance Rate: 22%) (Awarded Best Paper Honorable Mention) [PDF]
Wyche, S.P., Medynskiy, E., and Grinter, R.E. (2007). "Exploring Large Display in American Megachurches." Work-in-progress, In Extended Abstracts, CHI 2007: ACM Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems, San Jose, Ca., May 2007. [PDF]
RELIGION AND TECHNOLOGY USE IN NAIROBI, KENYA
Related Documents
Wyche, S.P., Aoki, P.M., and Grinter, R.E. (2008). "Re-Placing Faith: Reconsidering the Secular-Religious Use Divide in the United States and Kenya." In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI '08), Florence, Italy, April 5-10. (Acceptance Rate: 24%) [PDF]
"Fieldwork and Sketching: Translating Research Themes into Conceptual Designs." First annual IxDA conference, Interactions 08. Savannah, Ga., February 9, 2008. [LINK TO VIDEO]
SUN DIAL: EXPLORING TECHNO-SPIRITUAL DESIGN THROUGH A MOBILE ISLAMIC CALL TO PRAYER APPLICATION
Sun Dial is a mobile phone application that supports Muslims’ prayer practices. Our projects responds to the growing interest in knowing how to appropriately design technologies that account for and support user’s spiritual and religious practices. Unlike similar systems ours relies on imagery, rather than text and graphs to communicate prayer times. The sun’s gentle movement through the sky prompts Muslim users to their five daily prayer times. Users’ drove this choice, by telling us that tracking the sun was the most religiously valued method to determine prayer times. Additionally, our system was developed for Muslims practicing in the United States, who told us that they have different needs from those living in regions where Islam is more widely practiced.
Related Documents
Wyche, S.P., Caine, K.E., Davison, B.K., Patel, S.N., Arteaga, M., and Grinter, R.E. (2009). "Sacred Imagery in Techno-Spiritual Design." Proc. ACM SIGCHI Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09), Boston, MA, (CHI Note), Pgs. 55-58. [PDF]
Wyche, S.P., Caine, K.E., Davison, B., Arteaga, M., Grinter, R.E. (2008). "Sun Dial: Exploring Techno-Spiritual Design through a Mobile Islamic Call to Prayer Application." Work-in-progress, In Extended Abstracts, CHI 2008: ACM Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems, Florence, Italy, April 2008. [PDF]
Georgia Product Development Management Association's Student Design Competition, First Prize for "Sun Dial, "$1,000
Media
Mobile Phone Application Reminds Muslims When to Pray, WABE 90.1, Atlanta Public Radio
Time to Pray? Better Check Your Phone, Discover
Sun Dial - Mobile Phone App Alerts Muslims About Prayer Times, scientificblogging
DESIGNING SPECULATIVE CLEANING PRODUCTS: USING ELDERS’ PAST AND PRESENT HOUSEWORK EXPERIENCES TO INFORM DESIGN (MS THESIS)
Despite an increasing elder population that desires to age in place instead of a nursing home or assisted-living facility little, is known about how aging affects mundane domestic activities. Moreover, current home environments and ubiquitous products fail to respond to the physical changes which accompany growing older. If future homes and emerging technologies are to be universally accessible, researchdriven and human-centered approaches to design are needed. We live in a world designed by and created for a narrow part of the population; arguably designers’ lack of empathy for users unlike themselves is to blame. I propose using ethnography to create a better fit between designers, elders, and the built environment.
This exploratory project examines aging’s affects on housework, in order to inform and inspire future design. To do so I develop an alternative approach to product development that synthesizes a historical awareness with ethnographic accounts of elders’ past and present housework experiences. I ground this approach in several subjectively driven research tools and a collection of newly invented speculative designs motivated by the fieldwork. The study highlights subjectivity’s role in research, and suggests, indeed, that homes and products are not in tune with the physical changes that occur with aging. The emerging speculative designs draw attention to these changes and demonstrate how design paired with elder’s experiences can work in improving the connection between people and their home environments.
Related Documents
Wyche, S., Sengers, P., and Grinter, R.E. (2006). "Historical Analysis: Using the Past to Design the Future." Proc. of the 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp '06), Orange County, CA, Pgs. 35-51. [PDF].
Wyche, S. (2005). "Designing speculative cleaning products for older adults." Poster, ACM Conference on Designing for User eXperience (DUX '05), San Francisco, CA, Article No. 49 [PDF].
Wyche, S. (2006). "Inspiring Ways to Design and Clean."Ambidextrous: The Stanford University Journal of Design. Fall 2006, pp. 36-37.[PDF]