City Research Online

Abstract

The ‘Smart Home’ is a strongly technology-driven field. While user-centered requirements have been reported for specific features, a considerable gap persists for design based on an everyday home context and the social and emotional nature of the home. To address this, we present a user-centered design process to question and expand narrow framings of energy-efficiency and smart control and consider the richness and variety of the domestic context as design space for smart homes. Our three-step investigation employs cultural probing, participatory design fiction, and focus groups to progress from the home context “as-is” towards a blending of values with technological responses. Our findings highlight the home as a complex construct imbued with organically grown practices and individual and collective needs, values, and emotions. Based on empirical, real-user data we present features and system expectations that address this multifaceted overall picture. This paper advises the design process of future smart home solutions in three facets: first, we discuss the value of the design process applied in this study and future possibilities to expand. Second, we show design dimensions, namely time, space, relations, individual factors, and values that allow design for a heterogeneity of users and situations. Third, we derive specific design goals to highlight directions of smart home system design: design for control, low effort, integration, evolvability, identity, sociability, and benefits.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Publisher Keywords:	Smart home, Home control, User requirements, Design implications
Subjects:	T Technology > T Technology (General) T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Departments:	School of Science & Technology School of Science & Technology > Computer Science
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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