Creativity Greenhouse: Family Rituals 2.0

工作可能需要离开家的时间。对于一些员工来说，经常外出可能是几天，而对另一些员工来说，可能是更长的时间。离开家会影响家庭生活和参与家庭仪式，给管理相互竞争的工作和生活需求带来了挑战。信息和通信技术有助于克服缺勤工人与家属之间的距离障碍。这项研究将侧重于一些不同就业部门的流动工人(例如，技术、建筑和旅游行业以及军队)。它将同时考察家庭和组织实践。这项研究将找出移动员工和他们的家人认为什么是家庭仪式(包括世俗和宗教)，以及为什么这些家庭成员一起分享这些时刻很重要。具体地说，它将寻求了解这些仪式在不同类型的家庭环境中可能是什么。它将研究现有数字技术在支持家庭参与此类共享仪式活动方面的作用。这项研究还将通过一系列以设计为导向的活动，探索在这些家庭环境中使用技术所面临的挑战和机遇。然后，该项目将与这些家庭密切合作，设计和开发一些新的原型数字技术。这种方法将使用参与家庭将生活和使用的高科技和低技术设计，帮助我们进一步探索潜在技术在支持远程参与家庭仪式方面的作用。除了与家人合作外，这项研究还将了解组织如何考虑移动员工的工作与生活平衡，以及这些组织如何帮助员工在外出时帮助家人联系。这些组织将被邀请在项目结束时参加一个研讨会，了解研究结果，并就如何在未来的研究中推进结果及其对组织的潜在影响进行辩论。

Work can demand time away from home. For some employees being away from home might be a few days on a frequent basis, for others it may be much longer periods. Being away from home can impact on family life and participation in family rituals, creating a challenge to managing the competing demands of work and life. Information and communication technologies assist in overcoming the barrier of distance, between the absent worker and family. This research will focus on mobile workers across a number of different employment sectors (for example, technology, construction, and tourism industries, and the armed forces). It will look at both family and organisational practices. The research will find out what mobile workers and their family members consider to be family rituals (both secular and religious) and why it is important for these family members to share these moments together. Specifically, it will seek to understand what those rituals might be in different types of family setting. It will look at the role of existing digital technologies in supporting families to engage in such shared ritual activities. The research will also explore, through a series of design-led activities, what the challenges and opportunities are for technology use in these family settings. And then, in close collaboration with the families, the project will design and develop some novel prototype digital technologies. This approach will use both high- and low-tech designs which participating families will live with and use, helping us to further explore the role of potential technologies in supporting remote engagement in family rituals. Alongside working with families, the research will also find out how organisations consider the work-life balance of their mobile employees, and how these organisations may assist in helping a family to connect whilst the employee is away from home. These organisations will be invited to attend a workshop at the end of the project, to learn about the research findings, and debate how the outcomes should be taken forward in future research and their potential impact on the organisations.