Connecting Families by Sharing the Minutiae of their Lives

ABSTRACT Recent studies have shown that in distributed families keeping in touch is essential; this calls for technologies that can connect family members,and bring them closer virtually. There are several social networking technolo- gies online, but they are seldom designed for family con- nectedness and do not cater for the needs of computer- novice relatives. We present Near Dear, an application that brings online tools to an ambient display at home. The ambient display makes it easy for computer-novices to update and access online networking tools. We also conducted a user trial and evaluation of this system which indicated that the developed system is convenient and intuitive.