Now here is a technology that has been domesticated and whose use is understood, yet here it is being used is a novel way - to run a slideshow from an iPod. Is it still mundane?

Perhaps time in use is an important aspect of a technology being mundane? Or that it is “in plain view”?

I was having a go at using OS X’s latest widget functionality.

I used to use Yahoo widgets a lot, mainly for seeing what they weather was like in different parts of the world. My obsession with the weather is illustrated by the number of weather widgets there are in my selection above! I note that the new version of OS X will support widget authoring and sharing.

This is certainly a simple technology, close to Don Norman’s notion of an “information appliance” but is it a mundane technology? Is it mundane in it’s use?

On a visit to a Customer Briefing Centre in Singapore, I saw these camera everywhere. They wete used to focus in on and talk around particular parts of documents.

Another artefact in the Customer Briefing Centre.

This phone can also be used to control a room environment e.g. lighting.

Initially we conceived of mundane technologies as things like walking books and eyeglasses - technologies that have already been accepted and adopted into everyday life and whose function and use is generally understood (although, of course, eyeglasses can be used for purposes other than correcting vision…if you are imaginative enough :-)). The interest for us in this project is how these kinds of mainly digital technologies are used to do different kinds of ‘work’, whether that be the work of leadership, emotional work or just everyday, mundane work. So although their ‘function and use is generally understood’. the detail of how that plays out in particular situations is not. Thus a challenge for us is getting to understand this ‘detail’ through novel research approaches (such a adaptations of ‘Cultural probes’ (Gaver, 1999)).

Welcome to the blog for the European Microsoft Research Fellowship: Social Interaction and Mundane Technologies (sim tech).