Intergenerational Music Co-Listening

This research project investigates how grandparents and teen grandchildren can use technology to be online together and share a conversation around their favourite music. This is an exploratory study to understand both the social and technical barriers that might make having such interactions difficult for grandparents and teen grandchildren, with an aim to designing technologies to support intergenerational co-listening in the future.

Based upon our analysis of data collected from interviews, observations of recorded co-listening sessions, and pre- and post-surveys, our results contribute to a deep understanding of interaction patterns between grandparents and teen grandchildren around music co-listening. Results from our study show that music co-listening supports positive intergenerational interaction. Our participant pairs enjoyed the one-to-one opportunity they received during the study to listen to music together. Music provided an avenue for grandparents to ask questions and share memories with their grandchildren. Grandchildren also shared their favourite memories and opinions with their grandparents. Some grandchildren also provided technological support to their grandparents to make the conversation flow smoothly. Additionally, we observed that for 5 pairs, grandparents initiated more conversation than their grandchildren except the 6th pair; where the grandchild was an older teenager compared to other grandchildren. This suggests the possibility that the grandchild’s age may play an important role in the context of intergenerational interactions. Grandparents and teen grandchildren also appeared to enjoy the anticipation of not knowing what song was coming next and enjoyed seeing each other react to chosen favourite songs. Also, our study design showed that by limiting user control over music playing, it slowed the interaction between the dyads, giving them time and space to converse around music. Our results support the ongoing design of online family communication technologies to include increased support for co-activities such as music co-listening, to make it easier for separated family members to have meaningful and sustained communications.

Project Studies

• Intergenerational Music Co-Listening

Project Publications

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