Family Rituals 2.0 is a multidisciplinary research project exploring the value of daily rituals, using digital technology to connect family members who are working away to events at home. Funded by the EPSRC, the project is a collaboration between the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Newcastle University, University of the West Of England and Bournemouth University. The work involves design, anthropological, psychological and technological perspectives, with a critical approach.

Working with five families that experience regular separation due to work travel, a series of design-led ethnographic case studies were conducted. The information generated from these studies inspired the designers to create five Ritual Machines: artefacts that use digital technologies to connect separated family members to events at home.

Deliberately playful and provocative, the Ritual Machines have been designed to live with families for up to eight weeks. Each machine has been tailored for a particular family, identifying their specific domestic rituals and their attitudes towards home, work, separation and reunion. Rather than presenting a solution to a problem, the machines aim to introduce a conversation about what home and family life is, and what it means to be separated from it.