A Day In The Life: How People Use Consumer Electronics Devices in their Home

The aim of the research was to understand electronic devices usage in the home. How much usage? During what activities? In which rooms? With whom? When? An innovative method was used: participants wore small life-logging cameras that automatically took photos every 15 seconds. After each day of life-logging, the participant reviewed the photos with the experimenter, providing additional context and details. Ten participants, spent an average of 171.5 minutes per day for 4 days, life-logging their awake time at home. In total, more than 20,000 photos covering more than 80 hours were logged. The pattern of activities participants engaged in was similar to the authoritative American Time Use Survey. But in addition, we discovered many interesting facts about how people spend their awake-time at home: People multitasked 66% of the time; they spent 86% of their time using electronic devices; TV was the most-used device; watching TV was, uniquely, a background activity for twice as much time as it was a primary activity.