User requirements for the design of smart homes: dimensions and goals

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.