Abstract
Nowadays it has become increasingly common for family members to be distributed in different time zones. These time differences pose specific challenges for communication within the family and result in different communication practices to cope with them. This chapter discusses these challenges and practices based on a series of interviews with people who regularly communicate with immediate family members living in other time zones. We found that families rely on synchronous communication despite the time difference, implicitly coordinate their communication through soft routines, and show their sensitivity to time in various forms. These findings allow us to reflect on the meanings of time difference in connecting families, and design opportunities for improving the experience of such cross time zone family communication.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Partially reprinted here with permission.
References
Bales, E., Li, K. A., & Griwsold, W. (2011). CoupleVIBE: mobile implicit communication to improve awareness for (long-distance) couples. Proceedings of the ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) (pp. 65–74). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1958824.1958835.
Cao, X., Sellen, A., Brush, A. J. B., Kirk, D., Edge, D., & Ding, X. (2010). Understanding family communication across time zones. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (pp. 155–158). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1718918.1718947.
Judge, T. K., Neustaedter, C., & Kurtz, A. (2010). The family window: the design and evaluation of a domestic media space. Proceedings of the international conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI) (pp. 2361–2370). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1753326.1753682.
Kim, S., Kientz, J. A., Patel, S. N., & Abowd, G.D. (2008). Are you sleeping?: sharing portrayed sleeping status within a social network. Proceedings of the ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) (pp. 619–628). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1460563.1460660.
Lindley, S. E., Harper, R., & Sellen, A. (2009). Desiring to be in touch in a changing communications landscape: attitudes of older adults. Proceedings of the international conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI) (pp. 1693–1702). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1518701.1518962.
Lottridge, D., Masson, N., & Mackay, W. (2009). Sharing empty moments: design for remote couples. Proceedings of the international conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI) (pp. 2329–2338). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1518701.1519058.
Modlitba, P. L., & Schmandt, C. (2008). Globetoddler: designing for remote interaction between preschoolers and their traveling parents. Extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA) (pp. 3057–3062). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1358628.1358807.
Raffle, H., Ballagas, R., Revelle, G., Mori, K., Horii, H., Paretti, C., & Spasojevic, M. (2011). Pop goes the cell phone: asynchronous messaging for preschoolers. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC) (pp. 99–108). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1999030.1999042.
Strauss, A. C., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Tang, J. C., Zhao, C., Cao, X., & Inkpen, K. (2011). Your time zone or mine? A study of globally time zone-shifted collaboration. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (pp. 235–244). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1958824.1958860.
Tsujita, H., Yarosh, S., & Abowd, G. D. (2010). CU-Later: a communication system considering time difference. Proceedings of the ACM international conference adjunct papers on Ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) (pp. 435–436). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1864431.1864474.
Zerubavel, E. (1985). Hidden rhythms: schedules and calendars in social life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag London
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cao, X. (2013). Connecting Families across Time Zones. In: Neustaedter, C., Harrison, S., Sellen, A. (eds) Connecting Families. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4192-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4192-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-4191-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-4192-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)