Design and Field Trial of Tunee in Shared Houses: Exploring Experiences of Sharing Individuals’ Current Noise-level Preferences with Housemates

Being a little more careful about the sound that people produce is difficult in shared houses because individuals can generate several unintended living noises and sounds. We designed Tunee to help each housemate better understand the others’ context and desired noise-level. It is an interactive speaker that allows people to share noise-level preferences through the position change of nodes. Our three-week in-field study with four groups of participants revealed that expressing noise-level preference through nodes reduced the burden of verbally delivering issues about the trivial noises of everyday life, and the intentions of the lowered preference were referred to and deemed significant. We also identified how participants figured out what behavior was acceptable for others according to each noise-level. Our findings imply considerations in designing interfaces to support coordinating behaviors and awareness of social contexts in shared spaces.