ESRC seminar

Kristrún Gunnarsdóttir and Jie Jiang presented at an ESRC seminar event in Southampton, titled:  “Microenterprise, technology and big data: new forms of digital enterprise and work and ways to research them“.

This talk, titled: “Sensing work at home: insights from using sensors in household research“,  was part of a session on exploring new data and methods. Kristrún and Jie introduced the HomeSense project, focusing on what to expect of sensor technologies, what is captured, at what cost, and how sensors might be useful in observational studies of work at home.

Research interests in household life are already invested in topics such as:

work, chores, hobbies, entertainment
meals: practices surrounding food and drink
sleep: when households sleep
care: healthcare, self care, family care

What sensors are potentially good at capturing:

location:  identifying location of persons in households
(in)activity:  detecting activities and idleness
(non)-interactions:  detecting communications and silences
views:  opening new windows onto the world