A variety of systems have been designed to support communication between distance-separated grandparents and grandchildren. Yet there are few studies of the actual conversational routines of these groups as well as the social challenges that might arise as a result of technology usage. To address this gap, we conducted an interview and diary study that explores the conversational practices of distanceseparated grandparents and young grandchildren (aged 3-10) from the perspective of the grandparents and parents of the children. Our results describe the focus of grandparentgrandchild conversations. and show that grandparentgrandchild communication is not without its challenges: grandparents sometimes feel self-conscious, perceive that parents or children will be annoyed if they ask too many questions, and do not want to interfere too much in their grandchildren's lives. The implication is that designs should attempt to support the conversation routines and needs of grandparents and grandchildren while attempting to mitigate the social challenges.

Video chat systems such as Skype, Google+ Hangouts, and FaceTime have been widely adopted by family members and friends to connect with one another over distance. We have conducted a corpus of studies that explore how various demographics make use of such video chat systems where this usage moves beyond the paradigm of conversational support to one in which aspects of everyday life are shared over long periods of time, sometimes in an almost passive manner. We describe and reflect on studies of longdistance couples, teenagers, and major life events, along with design research focused on new video communication systems-the Family Window, Family Portals, and Perch-that explicitly support 'alwayson video' for awareness and communication. Overall, our findings show that people highly value long-term video connections and have appropriated them in a number of different ways. Designers of future video communication systems need to consider: ways of supporting the sharing of everyday life, rather than just conversation; providing different design solutions for different locations and situations; providing appropriate audio control and feedback; and, supporting expressions of intimacy over distance.

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A variety of systems have been designed to support communication between distance-separated grandparents and grandchildren. Yet despite this, there are few studies of the actual communication routines and needs of these groups. To address this, we have conducted a study that explores the existing communication activities as well as the future desired communication patterns between distance-separated grandparents and grandchildren between the ages of three and ten through interview with grandparents and parents. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the way they currently communicate as well as the expectations that could be used as a basis for future designs to support their needs.

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