The first phase to recruit Imagineers in Lannion is now well underway. The objective of connecting around a hundred households to very fast broadband, enabling them to experiment with the digital products and services of tomorrow will be reached easily (and even slightly exceeded).

While the households are being connected and supplied, now would be a good time to take a look at the characteristics of the people carrying out our experiments, before the first experiments begin.

What are their uses, their relationships with new technologies, but also their expectations and aspirations as to their new role as “ Imagineers”?

The economic context

Based in the Saint-Hugeon and Pouldiguy districts, the Imagineer households are home to an average of 3.5 people. The graph below shows the distribution by number of individuals in the household. 70% of Imagineer households have at least one child.

The socio-professional category of the Imagineers’ households follows the economic structure of the Lannion districts involved in the project.

This leads to an over-representation of higher intellectual professions, to the detriment of manual workers, pensioners and the unemployed. The current panel will be completed by connection to the projects of different organisations and institutions (Job centre, Post Office, high school, student residence) to address the experiments at all types of individual, regardless of their social class and economic situation.

Equipment

The Imagineer households have quite a high level of equipment since 44% of them have more than 2 computers in the house. As each computer may be connected to very fast broadband (WiFi, PLC cable), this equipment enables several members of the household to be involved at the same time during an experiment and guarantees the availability of several IT media.

Having one or more laptop computers is also an interesting resource for the people who will be calling on the Imagineers. In particular, it enables us to consider continuity of service at different places in the household, even a comparison of different uses inside and outside the home.

Note that laptop computers are only available in 41% of households that have a single computer, but as soon as the household has a second computer the possibility that there is at least one laptop computer is 93%. Note that 18% of households only have laptop computers and 8% don’t have any.

In addition to desktop and laptop computers, many of the Imagineers also have the most popular digital tools and technologies. In addition to extending use on tools other than computers, this equipment reveals an interest in or at least proximity to different uses related to digital technologies.

For example, 72.5% of Imagineers have a games console in their home (even if they don’t use it). The presence of MP3 and/or MP4 players and an external hard disk also seems to reveal the capacity that exists inside these homes to handle the different audio-video formats and probably to move content from one medium to another.

IT skills

The future experiments on the ImaginLab platform may require a certain command of IT tools, especially as additional equipment may be lent to the Imagineers. When the Imagineers are asked about their ability to maintain and keep a computer functioning correctly (update, cleaning, defragmentation, anti-virus), most of them said they were at ease (59%), others do it without feeling at ease (35%) or do not do it through lack of command (6%).

Internet usage

The time spent by the Imagineers on the Internet is vital, whether at their workplace, at home or one the move; they shape their “digital” lifestyle according to their relationship with the new communication resources, their level of dependency and their ability to understand and use the new tools that will be offered to them. The graph below shows that 47% of Imagineers spend an average of one hour (or less than one hour) per day on the Internet at home. At the other end of the scale, 27% spend more than 14 hours per week on the Internet, which is an average of two hours per day.

As the graph below shows, there are various types of online usage, both in terms of nature and frequency. They show that the Imagineers have very broad knowledge of all the possibilities offered by the web, from keeping up to date with the news to sharing information, via e-commerce or audio-video content consumption. While some elements are used at least weekly (search engine, email, news), we can see wider diversity in frequency for more complex usage. In relation to keeping up with a social network or consuming audio-video content, more than a third do so regularly, but two thirds of Imagineers are still familiar with this usage.

Motivations for Imagineers

Among the proposals that were suggested to the Imagineers as to why they committed to this project “participate in the development of new technologies” is the most common response. It strengthens the idea which led to the creation of the ImaginLab project, i.e. to make users real actors in the future of digital technologies, and not just consumers at the end of the chain.

The discovery and curiosity concepts were also highlighted, as was the idea of taking part in the development of their region. More surprisingly, only 27% of Imagineers admitted that they wanted to “monitor changes in their usage”; it is probably that the Imagineers for whom this concept still seems indeterminate will develop this requirement over the course of the coming experiments.