Understanding Perceived Utility and Comfort of In-Home General-Purpose Sensing through Progressive Exposure

A fundamental paradigm shift for in-home sensing is apparent. Special-purpose sensing, where there is a one-to-one relationship between sensors and applications, is evolving into general-purpose sensing, where there is a many-to-many relationship between sensors and applications. This new shift may impact how individuals think about in-home sensing, where utility and comfort are often linked to applications rather than sensed data. We explore the evolution of individuals' perceptions as they become increasingly and contextually aware of sensor capabilities and data characteristics. Through a multi-phase study where 12 participants were progressively led through six exposure conditions across laboratory and home environments, we find that exposure changes represent inflection points for perceptions of utility and comfort with data collection. These changes define opportunities for increasing trust in sensing infrastructures via data- and context-aware interventions, managing over-reliance on awareness notifications, and providing data-enabled "what if" analyses to balance comfort and utility within an individual's unique context and environment.