2.3 Family Life

2.3.1 Introduction

Janice, married with three children, works for First Commonwealth Bank (FCB) handling commercial accounts. Her husband, Mike, is a painting contractor. Their oldest, Matt, has started junior college and still lives at home. Claudia is in high school. The youngest child, Sharon, is in middle school.

Janice's desk job comes with a wired phone that is part of the FCB's virtual private network (VPN). She keeps her cell phone on "vibrate" and in her purse during work; it's bad enough being interrupted by one phone when meeting with a client, much less two (one wired and one wireless).

It's a cold, clear winter day, and Janice realizes that she will have to stay an hour later than expected. She would rather not stop at the Bi-Lo or cook dinner. She decides to call Mike to see if he can handle dinner.

2.3.2 The Present

Janice calls Mike on his cell phone to ask if he can stop by the store and pick up barbecued chickens on his way home from work. But, as is often the case, Mike is on the phone. She gets his voicemail and leaves a message:

"Sweetie, could you pick up a couple of barbecued chickens on your way home? I'm going to be late. Let me know if you can't, and either I'll call Matt or pick them up myself . Thanks. Bye."

Half an hour later, she has not gotten a call back from Mike. She checks her cell phone: one unanswered call. She retrieves her voicemail and learns that Mike is actually working on the other side of town and won't be able to stop by the store. She calls Matt. Again, she gets voicemail:

"Matt, this is mom. On your way home from school, could you buy two barbecued chickens at the Bi-Lo? Thanks. If you can't, please give me a call at work right away. See you tonight. Bye."

To make sure that Matt gets the message, she sends him a quick text message asking him to check his voicemail and call her. Janice is finally ready to leave work. Still no call from Matt. "I wonder if he got the chickens?" She calls home: The line is busy. Claudia is no doubt chatting. She calls Matt again: voicemail. As soon as she walks out the door, her office phone rings: Matt leaves a message on his mother's voicemail:

"Mom, I got the chickens. I put them in the oven to keep warm. Bye."

The disadvantages of using the present system are pretty clear. It requires too much manual intervention and depends on humans being simultaneously available for synchronous communication requiring their nearly undivided attention.

2.3.3 The Future

It is 6:30 am. Mike and Janice finish their coffee and perform a ritual that's been going on for almost two years now: they synchronize their organizers. Mike is using the latest Nokia communicator; Janice has an HP iPaq. Lying on the kitchen table, the two devices exchange packets of infrared light.

That afternoon, Janice realizes that she will have to stay an hour later than expected. She would rather not stop at the Bi-Lo or cook dinner. She takes out her iPaq and sees that Mike is working on the other side of town. However, Matt finishes his last class at 5:30. She calls Matt, but gets his voicemail:

"Matt, this is mom. On your way home from school, could you buy two barbecued chickens at the Bi-Lo? Thanks. If you can't, please give me a call at work right away. See you tonight. Bye."

Janice picks up her iPaq and selects the shopping page. Touching the Bi-Lo link and then the deli link, she then drags two chicken icons into her "shopping basket." She then opens the basket and selects a 6 o'clock pick-up. As nobody is at home, automatic delivery would not work without a special storage.

Janice drags the shopping icon into the "message board" space and touches "annotate." After a couple rings, a recorded voice welcomes her to the ATW message board and asks her to speak her full name . "Janice Weaver" is all that it takes for her to authenticate herself and gain access to the message board. Janice says "family" and then when prompted, explains the situation: "Hello everyone. I have to work late tonight so I'd really appreciate it if someone could pick up two barbecued chickens at the Bi-Lo. I've reserved them for 6 o'clock. If you can pick them up, please give me a call. If I don't hear from you, I'll get them myself, but dinner will be even later. Your choice! Thanks. Bye."

Janice goes back to work while the message board attempts to contact and deliver the message to the family. Mike's cell phone is called, but the message board recognizes that the call has been re-directed to voicemail (caller ID has certainly improved over the last few years). After the greeting message goes silent, the message board plays Janice's message and hangs up.

In a similar manner, the home number is called. The fourth call attempt doesn't receive a busy signal, and Sharon answers. She hears her mom's recorded message. Putting down the phone, she calls upstairs to her sister Claudia: "Mom wants you to pick up some chickens. You should call her."

Matt's cell phone doesn't get called: He receives an SMS containing his mom's message, while he's in the middle of an exam. His personal agent refuses to pass on the message to Matt, as the message has only low priority. It will be delivered to him after the exam.

Claudia is the first to phone back, but she calls her mother's cell phone instead of the office number. Nobody picks up the phone. Therefore she decides to ask the message service agent for more information on the details. Fortunately, Janice linked her shopping agent to the message service agent to form a workflow, making it easy for Claudia to see the details of the order. Claudia confirms taking on the task to the message service which would know how to close the loop with Janice and also close the task out, keeping others from taking it on or being bothered with the message.

Janice is finally ready to leave work. Still no call from Matt, but an automatic message telling her that he will get back after the exam. She calls home: busy. Claudia is no doubt chatting. As soon as she walks out the door, her office phone rings: Claudia's agent reminds her to leave a message on her mother's voicemail in addition to the automatic notification of the message service agent:

"Mom, I got the chickens. I put them in the oven to keep warm. See you later. Bye."

2.3.4 Summary

If we look at the key features of the me-centric implementation in this scenario, we can see that the community is the most important feature. There is no need for high-tech devices or high-speed networks. Today's PDAs and mobile phones can be enhanced to make this scenario reality. The difficulty lies in coordinating the communication within the family, which is sometimes already difficult enough, even when everyone is in the same room.

The future scenario is an example of the use of a standardized template for tossing a task out to a small community of potential volunteers and a way for the task creator to be notified of successful delegation and a way for other volunteers to be freed from further communication about the task and prevented from unnecessarily taking on an already spoken for task redundantly.

In Europe, many children age six and up already have their own mobile phones. Parents give them phones to call home (for the younger ones, it is the only number they are able to dial; all other numbers are disabled). One advantage of having a mobile phone is that it is possible to locate the person easily. Although GSM ^[8] provides only rough location capabilities, newer phones have GPS built in, enabling exact positioning. This means that parents can check where their children are without having to call them. An agent could be introduced to make sure children stick to a routine path when walking home from school, for example. The agent could alert parents if their child starts moving in the wrong direction, or begins to move too fast as though they had entered a vehicle.

^[8] Global system for mobile communication

In our scenario, an intelligent agent could coordinate the locations and the supermarkets and check in advance if a certain market has the desired chicken in stock. Another agent could coordinate and synchronize the agendas of all family members . GPS could also be used to locate the person closest to the market for convenience.

In Figure 2.4, you can see the basic infrastructure requires a similar set up like a company, where each family member has certain privileges and rights in the system. A communication agent should track where each family member is and how that family member can be reached best. If Mike, for example, tells his mobile that he is in a meeting, this information could be relayed back to somebody who may be trying to call him. Additionally, important information could be relayed to Mike in text form while he's in his meeting, so Janice could speak to the voicemail system and the agent could evaluate its importance. Today's voicemail systems allow the caller to specify the importance of the message, which is no good, as callers always think that their calls are of utmost importance. The agent acts on behalf of its user and not on behalf of the caller, which makes the agent trustworthy.

Figure 2.4. Family Life Ecosystem

The ecosystem should also support task distribution among family members. In this case, Janice could send out the task to be completed to everyone in the family, and a task agent would coordinate the task with everyone's agenda and capabilities to find who would be ideally suited for the task. The task agent would also coordinate the family with the outside world, e.g., with friends and other relatives, and would connect to other agents that may be of interest to the family, such as shopping agents or intelligent vacation agents .