Creativity Greenhouse: Family Rituals 2.0

工作可能需要时间离开家。对于一些员工来说，离开家可能是频繁的几天，对于其他人来说，可能要长得多。离家在外会影响家庭生活和家庭仪式的参与，对管理工作和生活的相互竞争的需求提出挑战。信息和通信技术有助于克服离家在外的工人与家人之间的距离障碍。这项研究将集中在移动的工人在一些不同的就业部门（例如，技术，建筑，旅游业和武装部队）。它将着眼于家庭和组织的做法。这项研究将找出移动的员工及其家庭成员认为什么是家庭仪式（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。具体来说，它将试图了解这些仪式可能是在不同类型的家庭环境。它将研究现有数字技术在支持家庭参与这种共享仪式活动中的作用。该研究还将通过一系列以设计为主导的活动，探讨在这些家庭环境中使用技术的挑战和机遇。然后，在与家庭的密切合作下，该项目将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科技设计，帮助我们进一步探索潜在技术在支持远程参与家庭仪式中的作用。除了与家庭合作外，研究还将了解组织如何考虑其移动的员工的工作与生活平衡，以及这些组织如何在员工离家时帮助家庭联系。这些机构将被邀请参加在项目结束时举行的工作坊，了解研究结果，并讨论如何在未来的研究中推进这些结果及其对机构的潜在影响。

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.