Evening Dinner

2020-12-11

At: Person bKEfGP Time: 18:00 - 22:00 Participatory Observations #observation

Environment

Four room apartement, shortly after moving in. There are still boxes on the ground and many things are just temporarily in place. The actors are situated in the living room, sitting around the table gathered for dinner.

Actors

• Person bKEfGP
• Mother, sister and partner of participant

Observations

• Google Nest Mini is in adjunct room, the door between them is open and device is visible. Person bKEfGP wants to play some music, but the device doesn’t hear the commands. Partner picks up device, which is attached to a extension cable, into the living room. It is placed on the armrest on a couch. The partner then tries to repeat the command, which was “Hey Google, play Dalida”, but there seems to be a technical problem.

• The partner as well as Person bKEfGP try repeatedly to play music but the device responds with “Je suis désolé, il y a un problème”. At other times, the device missunderstands the command, but still doesn’t work. They give up, slightly anoyed, and concentrate on the situation around the table again, eating and socialising.

• The sister tries again, one last time and the device succesfully plays music. This time David Bowie. Before issuing the command she said something along the line, “if it works now, imagine!”. A brief moment of joy breaks out. The succesful atempt was collectively experienced as a win. The sister and the partner high five each other.

• The people around the table, except the mother, take turns in changing the music every few songs now. To not disturb the social gathering they go very close to the voice assistant and speak in a low voice to issue new commands.

General Themes

• Placement
• Problems and Bugs

Animistic Themes

• Intimacy
• miscommunication with assistant

#observation