Broken Expectations in the Smart Home, by Sara Bly Et Al

Smart Homes 2

Lecture by Jason Hong

We read three papers:

·  The Evolution of Buildings and Implications for the Design of Ubiquitous Domestic Environments, by Tom Rodden et al

·  Broken Expectations in the Smart Home, by Sara Bly et al

·  Principles of Smart Home Control, by Scott Davidoff et al

The Evolution of Buildings and Implications for the Design of Ubiquitous Domestic Environments

by Tom Rodden et al

Two researchers who study the evolution of buildings are Tom Rodin and Steve Benford.

Today we use several methods to understand the home and the interactions that occur within it. These methods include things like ethnographic studies in which the researcher works as an observer watching how the family interacts. Another method is to use longitudinal studies that highlight trends over a long period of time. One such is the use of cultural probes where the subjects are given a packet containing such things as a camera or a diary and asked to perform some task as they go about their daily lives. An example might be giving a subject a camera and asking them to take pictures of problems they encounter.

There have been three key approaches taken by developers wanting to develop for the smart home.

1. Information appliances
2. Interactive household objects
3. Augmented furniture

·  What about smart spaces?

o  Smart spaces are more of a conglomeration of devices instead of a single device that fits in a category.

·  Differentiating the different categories was confusing. What is the point of categories?

·  Does the user care if their refrigerator is checking their email or their computer?

There are different forms of context sensing technologies. For example the smart kitchen which records what you are doing while cooking by taking pictures. Lets you know how much of each ingredient was added. Or a smart floor that uses pressure sensors to determine the location of people within a house.

Brand presents a framework that is designed to explain the various processes involved in the evolution of a building.

2.  Site (Fixed)

3.  Structure (30-300 years)

4.  Skin (20-30 years)

5.  Services (20-30 years)

6.  Space Plan (3-30 years)

7.  Stuff (Continual)

·  Home networking used to be a service and now it is in the stuff category so things can switch which part of the network they are in.

·  Services such as electric may not be the best model

·  As technology becomes more advanced we see it in more places and it begins showing up in more out of the way places

·  For example EZ pass took the old structure of toll booths and retrofitted it with technology to make something more efficient. As technology advances this framework becomes less important.

·  If we are changing things as tried as toll booths for some new technology then anything could and can be changed

Who owns, manages and maintains buildings as they evolve?

·  Who is responsible for each of these levels?

·  Who gets the benefit if something is maintained or upgraded at each level?

·  Who should we be marketing to?

·  Contractors, more knowledgeable and can pass the information to the home owner.

·  Home owners, probably unaware of what is actually inside their house.

·  Home owners might also be better swayed by commercials since they don’t’ know as much as contractors do.

·  The immediate benefits of structural elements are not immediately clear to the consumer.

·  How do businesses such as Home Depot fit in?

·  Do it yourselfer’s

·  Market the things needed to modify stuff, space plan, services and skin of buildings

·  Contractors purchase from Home Depot.

·  Branding is also important to consumers (digression)

·  One company may own many smaller stores which market to different consumer groups

·  BMW is not the same as a Saturn

·  Consumers expect certain things from certain brands

·  Early adopters are often the younger population which are not established and are often transient.

·  How do they fit in the framework?

·  They don’t own their own home but would probably like to make their apartment smart. How do we market to these early adopters

·  Market to contractors

·  Contractors have all sorts of neat toys already

·  Boom boxes which double as power tool recharges are a good example of marketing to a specific need.

·  Who manages what layer in the framework

·  If a home owner invests in making it smart does it increase home equity?

·  Will the technology become obsolete too fast?

·  Could we make a system that works for the next 20+ years and guarantee that it would continue to do so even if it will become “old” much earlier.

·  Longworks is a company that does home automation

·  Use devices such as electric usage monitors to determine electric usage of different devices

·  Who bears the burden of installing this sort of new technology and who benefits from it.

·  If the person doing the installation gets no benefit then it is unlikely to be done well if at all

What about the skin, structure and site layers?

·  Use sensors that can be poured into concrete or walls to monitor the health of a building.

·  After an earthquake determine the health of a house and if anything is cracking

·  Monitor the surrounding environment looking for things like forest fires, floods or mud slides

There is more to look at than the basic home design. Other thing such as communities, cities and regions all need to be designed. Ubiquitous design can be applied to these same things. How would the framework model fit a larger situation?

·  Communities already pay for certain services for the whole community might a bunch of sensors be paid for by the community?

·  Similar to trash collection

·  Massachusetts pays for trash collection on a per use basis

·  We (designers) mostly interact with the lower layers of the framework which means that is what we best understand. So we develop for the problem space we understand. Perhaps more isn’t being done in the higher levels because there are few designers who understand it

Broken Expectations in the Digital Home

By Sara Bly et al

One problem is that independent small components made by different companies do not play well together. This paper said that this wasn’t a major problem but the class seemed to seriously disagree.

·  Out-of-the box usability testing might help this problem

·  Build a profile of what is currently in your home to help better inform the next purchase made. Perhaps have a web site that suggests the type of products that work together. Information could even be uploaded by consumers.

·  Have a custom installation guide mailed to consumers based on their current setup

·  Harmony remote

·  More task based design, play DVD, instead of turn up sound, turn on DVD player, turn on TV, switch to Input 1 ect.

·  Has a PC interface that allows the consumer to specify their setup and how it is wired and based on this the site auto configures the remote to do the correct things.

·  Broken expectations of usage can be prevented by making it clear what to expect

·  Have published lists of things that work well together which could be maintained either by consumers or companies

·  Everyone currently just copies emacs files from the few people that can actually write them. Could we just copy what setups and config files from the few that try everything?

·  Digital Living Network Alliance

·  Create standards for things in the home

Principles of Smart Home Control

By Scott Davidoff et al

How can we design smart homes in a way that lets people control their own lives instead of control the devices themselves?

·  Part of the problem is helping people easily program their own devices in a way that doesn’t seem like programming.

·  CAMP – uses poetry to program systems

·  Jigsaw – allows users to piece together a program and connect them like a jigsaw puzzle.

·  Simple tasks can be massively confusing and require quite a bit of schedule alteration

·  Taking a child to soccer practice involves much planning and changing of plans based on all sorts of factors

·  Also highly sensitive to small breakdowns anywhere in the chain of events

·  Tasks can be better supported by such things as smart bags which remember what is normally in them and remind you if you might have forgot something.

·  Families do not operate the same as other families

·  Each family unit has its own routines and rules

·  Studying one family may not give insight into another

·  How are breakdowns solved?

·  Some solutions require pre-planning and contracting outside the home