WhisperCup: A Design Exploration for Improving the Remote Communication between Chinese Parents and Their Adult Children through Digitally-Augmented Everyday Objects

Chinese families usually place a strong emphasis on maintaining a sense of integrality even after the children have grown up. However, this might pose challenges in remote communication. For instance, over-frequent remote communication may disturb each other's life; and because of Chinese people's conservative way of expression, pervasive communication tools, such as video or voice calls, cannot communicate each other's emotions conveniently. To enhance remote communication between Chinese parents and their adult children, we employed a three-stage design process to identify the target users' needs in remote communication and presented WhisperCup. Our study indicated that WhisperCup could unintentionally increase daily communication between Chinese parents and adult children. The awareness system embedded in the WhisperCup prototype could provide a glimpse of each other's daily life, helping virtually engage in each other's life. Additionally, we found that WhisperCup could facilitate a better understanding of each other's lives while addressing privacy concerns.