Family storytelling for grandparents and grandchildren living apart

Abstract

Grandparents may feel revitalized when a grandchild joins the family, but the physical separation that often exists between grandparents and grandchildren can make it difficult to develop a close relationship. Current communication technologies, such as the phone, are inadequate for developing close relationships with children. This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a technology probe exploring how technology can be designed to alleviate this problem. Based on the evaluation, four important themes for designing technology for distributed intergen-erational bonding are elicited and discussed. The four themes are Conversational Context (to have something to talk about..