Exploring Design Spaces to Facilitate Household Collaboration for Cohabiting Couples

Household collaboration among cohabiting couples presents unique challenges due to the intimate nature of the relationships and the lack of external rewards. Current efficiency-oriented technologies neglect these distinct dynamics. Our study aims to examine the real-world context and underlying needs of couples in their collaborative homemaking. We conducted a 10-day empirical investigation involving six Korean couples, supplemented by a probe approach to facilitate reflection on their current homemaking practices. We identified the requirement for ideal household collaboration as a ’shared ritual for celebratory interaction’ and pinpointed the challenges in achieving this goal. We propose three design opportunities for domestic technology to address this gap: strengthening the meaning of housework around family values, supporting recognition of the partner’s efforts through visualization, and initiating negotiation through defamiliarization. These insights extend the design considerations for domestic technologies, advocating for a broader understanding of the values contributing to satisfactory homemaking activities within the household.