Group Members

Justin Helbert

Joe Henke

Ken Siebert

Parker Tew

Problem Statement

We define content to be pictures and videos parents take of their children, often accompanied by text to give some context. Typically content is created through a digital camera or an iPhone.
Content is typically used to share amongst family members or privately viewed later. Email is a common mechanism for sharing content.

We found there to be two main problems.

Owning another person’s content

• Parents are in the unique situation of essentially managing everything in their children’s lives when they are young
• This extends to the digital world as well
• Young children are incapable of managing the digital content of themselves, something typically not encountered elsewhere
• Therefore, parents inherit the responsibility of managing their children’s content

Co-Owning Content

• Parents, therefore, must manage the same content** This leads to dependence upon one parent to do so
  • Disallowing one parent to handle content only hinders use of the content*** It makes it harder for both parents to aggregate content
    • Doing anything with the content is more difficult for the passive parent
• There is a lack of communication regarding what content is stored and how it can be used

Interviews

Interview 1

KMS's Users - They were a couple whose children are one and three years old. The mother was familiar with computers, but does not use them as much as she would like. She relies more on the father to do this. However he has some of the same troubles as her. They use a combo of a camera and an iphone to record moments. They prefer to use the camera because they are able to upload these photos to their computer in one easy step where all the photos are organized chronologically in folders. However they do like using the iphone because this allows them to share with family members anytime they want through a simple text. They face the problem of not having media in a central location. Some times they have a difficult time finding a specific picture that they want because they are unable to track down which device a specific picture is stored on. The father and mother are opposed to putting photos of their kids on facebook, because they feel it floods people with unwanted media. They also wish that they were able to share more of their moments with family members.

Interview 2

They were a couple whose children are teenagers and older. The dad was tech savvy. He had a decent camera and was primarily responsible for taking pictures and video using that. The mom, while not necessarily bad with technology, stated she relied on on the dad to access digital pictures taken on the camera. Despite this inconvenience, the mom does share pictures roughly every day. Additionally, the mom 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. 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.

Interview 3

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

Description
My interviewee 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
He thought a good idea for viewing pictures was to see them randomly (e.x. a screensaver), and when an interesting one appears, be able to click and see related pictures.

Interview 4

• 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 childrens 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

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
• 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
  • 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