Welcome!

This is the home page for the Digital Living Research project. This site has descriptions of the research projects, research results, research funding, and research project members.

Research Goals

Our society is rapidly adopting a digital lifestyle, one of ever increasing reliance on digital media and digital devices. As more and more people adopt a digital lifestyle it will be brought into the home. In the home environment the devices and media that were largely designed for work settings often do not serve well. Thus, many households are having difficulty adopting devices and media that make the digital lifestyle satisfying.

This study considers three principle foci of transformation to a digital lifestyle from the user’s perspective:

  1. Devices – The physical artifacts that facilitate use and access to digital media. The research considers how users select, set-up, integrate, install, modify, and use devices as part of living a digital lifestyle.
  2. Media – The main artifact around which peoples’ activities are centered. The research considers the encoding, formats, collection, collection management, and storage issues that individuals have with their media.
  3. Problem Solving – Digital media devices are not isolated in their use – they need to be connected to other devices for users to engage in consumption or transfer of digital media. This research considers the consequences of connectivity; the problems, resolution techniques, and problem avoidance for connected devices and associated media.

Research Projects