Supporting distant familial relationships with the internet of things

In this paper we discuss the opportunities of 'off the shelf' Internet of things technologies to be used to support closeness in interpersonal relationships. We give our motivation to study IoT on technologies to support distant interpersonal relationships. We present two designs, 'SmartLamps' and 'Connected Rings', which use IoT technology to foster experiences of relatedness between distant families. We present some of the challenges faced while evaluating these devices using 'in the wild' research.