research-article

The Connected Shower: Studying Intimate Data in Everyday Life

Authors:

Joel E. Fischer,

Martin Flintham,

James ColleyAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, Volume 2, Issue 4

Article No.: 176, Pages 1 - 22

https://doi.org/10.1145/3287054

Published: 27 December 2018 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents the design and field study of the Connected Shower, a bespoke IoT device that captures water flow, temperature, shower-head movement, and shower product weight. We deployed the device in six UK homes for a week to understand the use of 'intimate data' as captured by IoT systems. Findings from our contextual interviews unpack a) how such intimate data is collaboratively made sense of by accounting for the social order of showering practices as part and parcel of everyday routines; b) how the data makes details of showering accountable to their partners; c) how people reason about sharing intimate data both with third parties and their partners. Our study shows that intimate data is not intimate per se, nor is intimacy a property of the data, but is an interactional outcome arising from the articulation of shower practices to their co-present partners. Thus, judgments as to whether the data is too sensitive, private, or intimate to share are contingent on situated sense-making and therefore subject to change; however, there was a general consensus that sharing intimate data with service providers was acceptable if the data was sufficiently abstract and anonymised. We discuss challenges in the design of trustworthy data-driven IoT systems, and how they need to be warranted to be both acceptable and adopted into our intimate practices.

Supplementary Material

kwon (kwon.zip)

Supplemental movie, appendix, image and software files for, The Connected Shower: Studying Intimate Data in Everyday Life

Download
51.89 KB

References

[1]

Teresa Almeida, Rob Comber, Gavin Wood, Dean Saraf, and Madeline Balaam. 2016. On Looking at the Vagina Through Labella. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1810--1821.

Digital Library

[2]

Swamy Ananthanarayan, Nathan Lapinski, Katie Siek, and Michael Eisenberg. 2014. Towards the Crafting of Personal Health Technologies. In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 587--596.

Digital Library

[3]

Ernesto Arroyo, Leonardo Bonanni, and Ted Selker. 2005. Waterbot: Exploring Feedback and Persuasive Techniques at the Sink. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '05). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 631--639.

Digital Library

[4]

Madeline Balaam, Rob Comber, Ed Jenkins, Selina Sutton, and Andrew Garbett. 2015. FeedFinder: A Location-Mapping Mobile Application for Breastfeeding Women. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1709--1718.

Digital Library

[5]

Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt. 1999. Contextual Design. interactions 6, 1 (Jan. 1999), 32--42.

Digital Library

[6]

Eli Blevis. 2007. Sustainable Interaction Design: Invention & Disposal, Renewal & Reuse. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 503--512.

Digital Library

[7]

P. Bourdieu and L.J.D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. University of Chicago Press. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rs4fEHa0ijAC

[8]

Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3, 2 (2006), 77--101. arXiv:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

[9]

Richard L. Bushman and Claudia L. Bushman. 1988. The Early History of Cleanliness in America. The Journal of American History 74, 4 (1988), 1213--1238. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1894408

[10]

Enrico Costanza, Sarvapali D. Ramchurn, and Nicholas R. Jennings. 2012. Understanding Domestic Energy Consumption Through Interactive Visualisation: A Field Study. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 216--225.

Digital Library

[11]

Andy Crabtree, Terry Hemmings, and Tom Rodden. 2002. Pattern-based Support for Interactive Design in Domestic Settings. In Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques (DIS '02). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 265--276.

Digital Library

[12]

Andy Crabtree and Richard Mortier. 2015. Human Data Interaction: Historical Lessons from Social Studies and CSCW. In ECSCW 2015: Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 19-23 September 2015, Oslo, Norway, Nina Boulus-Rødje, Gunnar Ellingsen, Tone Bratteteig, Margunn Aanestad, and Pernille Bjørn (Eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 3--21.

[13]

Andy Crabtree and Tom Rodden. 2004. Domestic Routines and Design for the Home. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 13, 2 (01 Apr 2004), 191--220.

Digital Library

[14]

Andy Crabtree and Peter Tolmie. 2016. A Day in the Life of Things in the Home. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1738--1750.

Digital Library

[15]

Audrey Desjardins, Ron Wakkary, and William Odom. 2015. Investigating Genres and Perspectives in HCI Research on the Home. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3073--3082.

Digital Library

[16]

Carl DiSalvo, Phoebe Sengers, and Hrönn Brynjarsdóttir. 2010. Mapping the Landscape of Sustainable HCI. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1975--1984.

Digital Library

[17]

Thomas Erickson, Mark Podlaseck, Sambit Sahu, Jing D. Dai, Tian Chao, and Milind Naphade. 2012. The Dubuque Water Portal: Evaluation of the Uptake, Use and Impact of Residential Water Consumption Feedback. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 675--684.

Digital Library

[18]

Joel E Fischer, Andy Crabtree, James A Colley, Tom Rodden, and Enrico Costanza. 2017. Data work: how energy advisors and clients make IoT data accountable. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 26, 4-6 (2017), 597--626.

Digital Library

[19]

Joel E. Fischer, Andy Crabtree, Tom Rodden, James A. Colley, Enrico Costanza, Michael O. Jewell, and Sarvapali D. Ramchurn. 2016. "Just Whack It on Until It Gets Hot": Working with IoT Data in the Home. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5933--5944.

Digital Library

[20]

Fitbit. {n. d.}. ({n. d.}). https://www.fitbit.com/uk/home

[21]

Jon Froehlich, Leah Findlater, and James Landay.2010. The Design of Eco-feedback Technology.In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1999--2008.

Digital Library

[22]

Jon E. Froehlich, Eric Larson, Tim Campbell, Conor Haggerty, James Fogarty, and Shwetak N. Patel. 2009. HydroSense: Infrastructure-mediated Single-point Sensing of Whole-home Water Activity. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 235--244.

Digital Library

[23]

Martin Hand, Elizabeth Shove, and Dale Southerton. 2005. Explaining Showering: a Discussion of the Material, Conventional, and Temporal Dimensions of Practice. Sociological Research Online 10, 2 (2005), hand. http://www.socresonline.org.uk/10/2/hand.html

[24]

Marc Hassenzahl, Stephanie Heidecker, Kai Eckoldt, Sarah Diefenbach, and Uwe Hillmann. 2012. All You Need is Love: Current Strategies of Mediating Intimate Relationships Through Technology. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 19, 4, Article 30 (Dec. 2012), 19 pages.

Digital Library

[25]

Paul Herrington. 1996. Climate change and the demand for water. London. Vol. xi. London: HMSO.

[26]

Sun-ha Hong. 2016. Data's Intimacy: Machinic Sensibility and the Quantified Self. communication +1 5, 1 (sep 2016).

[27]

Kevin Huang, Patrick J. Sparto, Sara Kiesler, Asim Smailagic, Jennifer Mankoff, and Dan Siewiorek. 2014. A Technology Probe of Wearable In-home Computer-assisted Physical Therapy. In Proceedings of the 32Nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2541--2550.

Digital Library

[28]

Hilary Hutchinson, Wendy Mackay, Bo Westerlund, Benjamin B. Bederson, Allison Druin, Catherine Plaisant, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Stéphane Conversy, Helen Evans, Heiko Hansen, Nicolas Roussel, and Björn Eiderbäck. 2003. Technology Probes: Inspiring Design for and with Families. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '03). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 17--24.

Digital Library

[29]

Giovanni Iachello and Jason Hong. 2007. End-user Privacy in Human-computer Interaction. Found. Trends Hum.-Comput. Interact. 1, 1 (Jan. 2007), 1--137.

Digital Library

[30]

Karin Kappel and Thomas Grechenig. 2009. "Show-me": Water Consumption at a Glance to Promote Water Conservation in the Shower. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology (Persuasive '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 26, 6 pages.

Digital Library

[31]

Mark Kinver. 2011. People's showering habits revealed in survey. (2011). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15836433

[32]

Alfred Kobsa. 2002. Personalized Hypermedia and International Privacy. Commun. ACM 45, 5 (May 2002), 64--67.

Digital Library

[33]

Treffyn Lynch Koreshoff, Tuck Wah Leong, and Toni Robertson. 2013. Approaching a Human-centred Internet of Things. In Proceedings of the 25th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference: Augmentation, Application, Innovation, Collaboration (OzCHI '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 363--366.

Digital Library

[34]

Pei-Yi Kuo and Michael S. Horn. 2014. Energy Diet: Energy Feedback on a Bathroom Scale. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 435--446.

Digital Library

[35]

Kari Kuutti and Liam J Bannon. 2014. The turn to practice in HCI: towards a research agenda. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 3543--3552.

Digital Library

[36]

Stacey Kuznetsov and Eric Paulos. 2010. UpStream: Motivating Water Conservation with Low-cost Water Flow Sensing and Persuasive Displays. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1851--1860.

Digital Library

[37]

Andrés Lucero, Tatiana Lashina, Elmo Diederiks, and Tuuli Mattelmäki. 2007. How Probes Inform and Influence the Design Process. In Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces (DPPI '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 377--391.

Digital Library

[38]

Vivian Genaro Motti and Kelly Caine. 2015. Users' Privacy Concerns About Wearables. In Financial Cryptography and Data Security, Michael Brenner, Nicolas Christin, Benjamin Johnson, and Kurt Rohloff (Eds.). Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, 231--244.

[39]

David H. Nguyen, Alfred Kobsa, and Gillian R. Hayes. 2008. An Empirical Investigation of Concerns of Everyday Tracking and Recording Technologies. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 182--191.

Digital Library

[40]

Jon O'Brien, Tom Rodden, Mark Rouncefield, and John Hughes. 1999. At Home with the Technology: An Ethnographic Study of a Set-top-box Trial. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 6, 3 (Sept. 1999), 282--308.

Digital Library

[41]

James Pierce, Chloe Fan, Derek Lomas, Gabriela Marcu, and Eric Paulos. 2010. Some Consideration on the (in)Effectiveness of Residential Energy Feedback Systems. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 244--247.

Digital Library

[42]

James Pierce and Eric Paulos. 2012. Beyond Energy Monitors: Interaction, Energy, and Emerging Energy Systems. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 665--674.

Digital Library

[43]

Roy Porter. 1989. Concepts of cleanliness: changing attitudes in France since the Middle Ages. (apr 1989), 258 pages.

[44]

M.R. Redclift. 1996. Wasted: Counting the Costs of Global Consumption. Earthscan. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XMtbvw6FttEC

[45]

AMA research. 2017. Shower Market Report - UK 2017-2021 Analysis. (2017). https://www.amaresearch.co.uk/products/showers-2017

[46]

E. Shove. 2003. Comfort, cleanliness and convenience: the social organization of normality. BERG. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r6-3AAAAIAAJ

[47]

Yolande Strengers. 2008. Smart Metering Demand Management Programs: Challenging the Comfort and Cleanliness Habitus of Households. In Proceedings of the 20th Australasian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Designing for Habitus and Habitat (OZCHI '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9--16.

Digital Library

[48]

Yolande A.A. Strengers. 2011. Designing Eco-feedback Systems for Everyday Life. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2135--2144.

Digital Library

[49]

Lucy Suchman, Jeanette Blomberg, Julian E Orr, and Randall Trigg. 1999. Reconstructing technologies as social practice. American behavioral scientist 43, 3 (1999), 392--408.

[50]

Alex S. Taylor and Laurel Swan. 2005. Artful Systems in the Home. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '05). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 641--650.

Digital Library

[51]

Peter Tolmie, Andy Crabtree, Tom Rodden, James Colley, and Ewa Luger. 2016. "This Has to Be the Cats": Personal Data Legibility in Networked Sensing Systems. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 491--502.

Digital Library

[52]

P. Turton. 1998. The Ideal Conservation Home. Environment Agency, London, UK.

[53]

Evelien van de Garde-Perik, Panos Markopoulos, Boris de Ruyter, Berry Eggen, and Wijnand Ijsselsteijn. 2008. Investigating Privacy Attitudes and Behavior in Relation to Personalization. Social Science Computer Review 26, 1 (2008), 20--43.

Digital Library

[54]

Mark Weiser. 1999. The Computer for the 21st Century. SIGMOBILE Mob. Comput. Commun. Rev. 3, 3 (July 1999), 3--11.

Digital Library

[55]

Peter West, Richard Giordano, Max Van Kleek, and Nigel Shadbolt. 2016. The Quantified Patient in the Doctor's Office: Challenges & Opportunities. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3066--3078.

Digital Library

[56]

Peter Worthy, Ben Matthews, and Stephen Viller. 2016. Trust Me: Doubts and Concerns Living with the Internet of Things. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 427--434.

Digital Library

Cited By

Windl MSchlegel MMayer S(2024)Exploring Users' Mental Models and Privacy Concerns During Interconnected InteractionsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36765048:MHCI(1-23)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3676504
Snow SKhan ADay KMatthews B(2024)Household Wattch: Exploring Opportunities for Surveillance and Consent through Families’ Household Energy Use DataACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/367322831:4(1-30)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673228
Windl MFeger S(2024)Designing Interactive Privacy Labels for Advanced Smart Home Device Configuration OptionsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661527(3372-3388)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661527
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The Connected Shower: Studying Intimate Data in Everyday Life
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Ubiquitous and mobile computing
    1. Empirical studies in ubiquitous and mobile computing

Recommendations

Guess the Data: Data Work to Understand How People Make Sense of and Use Simple Sensor Data from Homes
CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Simple smart home sensors, e.g. for temperature or light, increasingly collect seemingly inconspicuous data. Prior work has shown that human sensemaking of such sensor data can reveal domestic activities. Such sensemaking presents an opportunity to ...
Probing IoT-based consumer services: ‘insights’ from the connected shower
Abstract
This paper presents findings from the deployment of a technology probe—the connected shower—and implications for the development of ‘living services’ or autonomous context-aware consumer-oriented IoT services that exploit sensing to gain consumer ‘...
"Just whack it on until it gets hot": Working with IoT Data in the Home
CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

This paper presents findings from a co-design project that aims to augment the practices of professional energy advisors with environmental data from sensors deployed in clients' homes. Premised on prior ethnographic observations we prototyped a sensor ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies Volume 2, Issue 4

December 2018

1169 pages

EISSN:2474-9567

DOI:10.1145/3301777

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 December 2018

Accepted: 01 October 2018

Revised: 01 August 2018

Received: 01 May 2018

Published in IMWUT Volume 2, Issue 4

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Funding Sources

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

28
Total Citations
View Citations
861
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)107
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5

Reflects downloads up to 17 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Windl MSchlegel MMayer S(2024)Exploring Users' Mental Models and Privacy Concerns During Interconnected InteractionsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36765048:MHCI(1-23)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3676504
Snow SKhan ADay KMatthews B(2024)Household Wattch: Exploring Opportunities for Surveillance and Consent through Families’ Household Energy Use DataACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/367322831:4(1-30)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673228
Windl MFeger S(2024)Designing Interactive Privacy Labels for Advanced Smart Home Device Configuration OptionsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661527(3372-3388)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661527
Gómez Ortega ABourgeois JKortuem G(2024)Sensitive Data Donation: A Feminist Reframing of Data Practices for Intimate Research ContextsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661524(2420-2434)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661524
Jain PXu ADownes TKim IKhan TBiehl JLee A(2024)Understanding Perceived Utility and Comfort of In-Home General-Purpose Sensing through Progressive ExposureProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36374328:CSCW1(1-32)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637432
Wu SCorr XGao XDe Koninck SBowers RDevendorf LCiolfi LHogan TDöring TJenkins Tvan Dijk JHuron SLi ZCoyle DSigner B(2024)Loom Pedals: Retooling Jacquard Weaving for Improvisational Design WorkflowsProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633358(1-16)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623509.3633358
Marky KStöver APrange SBleck KGerber PZimmermann VMüller FAlt FMühlhäuser M(2024)Decide Yourself or Delegate - User Preferences Regarding the Autonomy of Personal Privacy Assistants in Private IoT-Equipped EnvironmentsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642591(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642591
Seymour VXenitidou MTimotijevic LHodgkins CRatcliffe EGatersleben BGilbert NJones C(2024)Public acceptance of smart home technologies in the UK: a citizens’ jury studyJournal of Decision Systems10.1080/12460125.2023.2298617(1-27)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/12460125.2023.2298617
Lenhart APark SZimmer MVitak J(2023)"You Shouldn't Need to Share Your Data": Perceived Privacy Risks and Mitigation Strategies Among Privacy-Conscious Smart Home Power UsersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36100387:CSCW2(1-34)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610038
Yadav DBalaam MLampinen A(2023)Invisibility or Visibility in Intimate Care at the Workplace? Examining the Use of Breast PumpsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581411(1-15)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581411
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents