Super Studio is a 3 term, year long design research study in the Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design.
This year we’ve been focusing on how streaming media affects families, in particular families with tweens (children ages 11-15).
As streaming, real-time content becomes an increasingly accessible form of media, our research intends to examine the roles that real-time media content might play in the domestic sphere. Specifically, we wish to explore how streaming media affects interactions between family members, and how it may work to alter certain conversation dynamics.
By documenting their interactions with streaming media in their homes, engaging them with streaming media-based activities pertaining to their domestic spaces, and conducting post interviews, we hope to gain insights into how families engage and respond to real-time media, and further, to use the accumulated data to understand what families value, how they make conversation, how they communicate both verbally and physically, as well as how they choose to capture their experiences.
This study will be directed by research conducted from Fall 2007 as well as furthered research from our reflections and findings this term, Spring 2008. One of our main research pursuits is to further the overall definition of real-time streaming media. What we are especially focused on, however, is how our developing understanding of real-time streaming media can follow-up on areas resulting from our findings from last terms study.
We have three specific research areas from Fall 2007 that we are following up on this term:
1) the ways “existence value” shapes a family’s motivations and behaviors
2) the dynamics of family conversation, and
3) why certain events and occurrences are more ‘sticky’—captivating, engaging, and lasting—than others.
Since this study is a continuation of our research findings from our Fall 2007 semester, we are focusing on several questions that emerged from our research findings about the families and about our understanding of streaming media:
1) Can we create a public space within the home that allows conversations and storytelling to emerge between family members? In particular, can our projects give voice to family members who haven’t necessarily had a space to voice themselves?
2) How does streaming media affect conversations and physical relationships that stem from family rituals?
3) How can we use an unfamiliar object to foster family members’ relationships and communication methods?
4) How can the affordances of streaming media encourage self-reflection as well instigate changes in family structure, in routine behaviors in the home, and in the overall traditional family dynamics?
Our Hypothesis
We contend that the presence of real-time, streaming media content in a family’s home will influence the behaviors and social interactions of family members. We believe that real-time content will stimulate thoughts, expressions and discussions that are not typically verbalized or communicated in the presence of more traditional media technologies. We also believe that streaming media will become an active part of domestic life that will prominently exist alongside current popular forms of non-streaming or pre-edited forms of media (i.e. television, music, print, etc.). Specifically, our research intends to discover 1) how real-time media affects the ways families choose to have conversations with one another as well as with non-members, 2) how families go about discovering new ways of communicating and interpreting issues, concerns, desires and memories with one another, 3) how placing streaming media in different locations throughout the home might affect perceptions of the traditional or understood use of a space, 4) how streaming media can alter routine domestic behaviors and family rituals, as well as stimulate new behaviors that can be integrated into their domestic lifestyle; and 5) how real-time media can enhance family narratives and alter family hierarchical structures.
