The prayer companion : openness and specificity, materiality and spirituality
In this paper we describe the Prayer Companion, a device we developed as a resource for the spiritual activity of a group of cloistered nuns. The device displays a stream of information sourced from RSS news feeds and social networking sites to suggest possible topics for prayers. The nuns have engaged with the device enthusiastically over the first ten months of an ongoing deployment, and, notwithstanding some initial irritation with the balance of content, report that it plays a significant and continuing role in their prayer life. We discuss how we balanced specificity in the design with a degree of openness for interpretation to create a resource that the nuns could both understand and appropriate, describe the importance of materiality to the device’s successful adoption, consider its implications as a design for older people, and reflect on the example it provides of how computation may serve spirituality.
Item Type | Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
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Subjects |
Mathematical and Computer Sciences > Human-computer Interaction Creative Arts and Design > Design Practice Creative Arts and Design > Interactive and Electronic Design |
Departments, Centres and Research Units | Design > Interaction Research Studio |
Date Deposited | 02 Nov 2010 15:51 |
Last Modified | 29 Apr 2020 15:29 |
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picture_as_pdf - prayerCompanion.pdf
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subject - Accepted Version