2009-03,
Sung, Ja-Young,
Christensen, Henrik I.,
Grinter, Rebecca E.
It has long been recognized that novelty effects exist in the
interaction with technologies. Despite this recognition, we still
know little about the novelty effects associated with domestic
robotic appliances and more importantly, what occurs after the
novelty wears off. To address this gap, we undertook a
longitudinal field study with 30 households to which we gave
Roomba vacuuming robots and then observed use over six
months. During this study, which spans over 149 home visits, we
encountered methodological challenges in understanding
households' usage patterns. In this paper we report on our
longitudinal research, focusing particularly on the methods that
we used 1) to understand human-robot interaction over time
despite the constraints of privacy and temporality in the home,
and 2) to uncover information when routines became less
conscious to the participants themselves.