GR1

Interviews

Interview 1

• Father
  • He was tech savvy. 
  • He had a decent camera and was primarily responsible for taking pictures and video using that.
  • He maintained raw pictures in the file system of his computer.

• Mother
  • While not necessarily bad with technology, she stated she relied on on the dad to access digital pictures taken on the camera. 
  • User her iPhone a lot to text pictures as well
  • She strongly expressed that she wished she had taken more video of her children when they were younger for posterity and to look back at now. 

• Description
  • This couple had teenage children and older. Both parents also strongly expressed they wish they could categorize pictures of their children. 
  • They said specifically they would most likely do this for their children but not for most other pictures in general.

• Interesting Moment: The Mom actually shares content almost every day, despite depending on the Dad to access all the content! The specific work around was typically emailing each individually requested picture, which seemed incredibly cumbersome.

Interview 2

• Father
  • Age: 40’s
  • Occupation: Software Engineer
  • Children: 6 and 8 years old

• Description
  • Father uses a camera about once a week and takes video of his kids once a month for special occasions.  
  • He uploads all of his pictures to his computer and just keeps them in folders; because he’s very experienced with computers, he can easily find them.  
  • He mentioned that other family members often have trouble even finding files they just uploaded.  
  • He personally doesn’t share content, as his wife does all of that, and he doesn’t think their content is relevant to other people.  
  • They share pictures of their kids mostly on Facebook, but are not familiar enough with privacy settings to bother with restricting who they share with.  
  • I actually showed him how to restrict picture sharing to a list of people; it was what he wanted, but he seemed not willing to go through that whole process- it was simply too many steps.

• Interesting Moment: In this family, the father uploads the content, but is not interested in sharing. The mother is the primary sharer, and there is a lot of trouble for her finding specifically where the father puts the content. The father explained that the mother has to ask him for the location of the content, which makes for a "cumbersome" process.

Interview 3

• Father 
  • Age: 70
  • Occupation: Retired Cardiologist
  • Computer Experience: Uses computer for email, photography, sharing pictures and browsing the web. Manages all of the couples content.

• Mother
  • Age: 50
  • Occupation: Financial Advisor
  • Computer Experience: Uses computer primarily for email and browsing the web. Manages none of the couples content.

• Children 
  • 3 children: 19, 30, and 32 years old
  • 1 grandchild: <1 year old

• Description
  • Both the Mother and the Father primarily use their iPhones to take pictures/videos of their children and grandchild; however, when both are present only the father takes pictures.
  • The Mother had no clue how to access the Father’s content on his computer and would never try, therefore it was only the Father that shared the couples content. The Mother would even go to the extent of asking the Father to share a particular item for her.
  • Both parents found having access to this content extremely important because, ”thats what matters when you are old, family.”
  • Both were concerned about the privacy of their children's content and who the content would be shared with.

• Interesting Moment: Mother has absolutely no idea how to access the fathers’ digital content, yet she loves looking at pictures of her children and granddaughter. This limits her to only look at pictures she takes on her phone and pictures the father prints out. Father was quoted as saying “Old people appreciate pictures that most people wouldn’t post on Facebook.”  

User Classes

In our findings, it was common for a couple to consist of one passive and one active parent.  This description characterizes each of the 3 couples that we interviewed very well.

• Passive Parent
  • Parent who does not normally handle the logistics of storing content
  • Because of this, it is burdensome for them to access content or contribute new content because
    • Sometimes, pictures and videos are stored on the active parent’s laptop
    • Sometimes, even if they have physical access, the passive parent may not understand the storage paradigm i.e. folder layout or naming scheme

• Active Parent
  • Parent who does normally handle the logistics of storing content
  • Either more technically savvy or more enthusiastic about using content
  • Sharing is easy when they (the active parent) wants to share
  • Sharing is not easy when the passive parent wants to share because the active parent must do all the work, often with the passive parent just looking over their shoulder

Needs and Goals

• Passive Parent
  • Primarily concerned with accessing existing content easily, even though they didn’t organize it
    • This especially means not having to go through the active parent 
      • In Interview 1, where emailing individual pictures was needed for this process
      • In Interview 3, the mother avoided this process altogether because it was annoying for both parties.
    • Wants clearer understanding of what content is accessible, without being the one who contributed it

• Active Parent
  • Wants to continue to actively create and store content
    • In Interview 3, the father liked be able to reliably know his content is safe and it's backed up location
  • Does not want passive parent’s involvement to interfere with their use of the content
  • Should not be relied upon to do everything with content