1. Home Automation in the Wild: Challenges and Opportunities
A.J. Brush
Bongshin Lee
Ratul Mahajan
Sharad Agarwal
Stefan Saroiu
Colin Dixon

2. Smart Homes
Is it possible to create a home environment that is aware of its occupants whereabouts and activities?
Georgia Tech Aware Home
Develop a home that essentially programs itself by observing the lifestyle and desires of the inhabitants, and learning to anticipate and accommodate their needs
The Adaptive House, Mozer et al.

3. Don’t forget Hollywood
It's up to Ben to match wits with PAT's central intelligence and "out-smart" the Smart House once and for all!

4. Capability to automate and control multiple disparate systems
Home Automation
Capability to automate and control multiple disparate systems
Motion sensor
Door sensor
Camera
Programmed light switches
Wall Panels
Phone Access
Lucero, S., Burden, K. Home Automation and Control, ABI Research 2010

5. Adopting Home Automation
Do-It-Yourself (DIY)
Outsourced
Our goal: Better understand current state of home automation and learn from people’s long term use.

6. Semi-Structured Interview
Study Method
14 households with one or more of the following:
Remote lighting control
Multi-room audio/video systems
Security cameras
Motion detectors
Outsourced
DIY
Semi-Structured Interview
Inventory
Questionnaire
Home Tour
Chetty, M., Sung, J-Y., Grinter, R. How Smart Homes Learn: The Evolution of the Networked Home and Household. Proc. UbiComp 2007,

7. Related Work Inspirations
Technology guru and consumers
Financial considerations
Automation for religious purposes
Long-term general use of home automation
Poole, E., Chetty, M., Grinter, R., Edwards, W.K. More than Meets the Eye: Transforming the User Experience of Home Network Management. Proc. DIS 2008.
Rode, J., Toye, E., Blackwell, A. The Domestic Economy: a Broader Unit of Analysis for End User Programming. Proc. CHI 2005.
Grinter, R., Edwards, W., Chetty, M., Poole, E.S., Sung, J.-Y., Yang, J., Crabtree, A., Tolmie, P., Rodden, T., Greenhalgh,C., Benford, S. The ins and outs of home networking: The case for useful and usable domestic networking. ACM ToCHI 16, 2(2009).
Woodruff, A., Augustin, S., Foucalt, B. Sabbath Day Home Automation: “It‟s Like Mixing Technology and Religion” Proc. CHI 2007.

8. Living with Automation
Convenience
“It allows me to be lazy, honestly, because every day [before automation]
I would go double check the locks, make sure all the lights are off on all the floors and make sure that everything’s closed.” Technology consumer from DIY house 6, D6_C

9. Why? Peace of Mind Control O: over various devices
DIY: over what they installed and enabled.
Monitoring

10. Diversity in Installation & Desires
From X10 to control a few lights to embedded panels in every room
Control
Media
Security
Environment

11. Augmented, Not Smart
User-controlled
Rule-based

12. Not ready for broad adoption
4 barriers
Cost, Inflexibility, Manageability, Security
Caveat 1: Not problems for our participants
Caveat 2: Not answering whether functionality
is generally appealing

13. Barrier 1: High Cost of Ownership+
DIY: $200 - $60,000, $5,000 median
DIYs trade-off lower monetary cost for time
O: $13,500 – $120,000 $40,000 median

14. Barrier 1: High Cost of Ownership
Two Surprises
Consultant visits not a big factor
Low perceived value of additional applications

15. Barrier 2: Inflexibility
Integration Ease or Flexibility
Structural or Retrofit?
(9 put automation in place during structural changes)
DIY: Use expertise to overcome Outsource: Choose one brand
Surprise:
Thinking ahead to moving…

16. Barrier 3: Poor Manageability
Our households were well-equipped to manage
Complex UI
Consultant Required
“I started explaining the panel (how to call fire department) to them and they looked in dread. People just don’t want to touch it. And my own mother sat in our house in the dark, because she was scared to touch any of the controls.”
Difficult to customize for Outsourced

17. Barrier 3: Poor Manageability
Iteration required
“I thought when I went into this, I’d want my alarm system integrated and I’d want these automatic features firing off in the background like, you know, I’d wake up and music is playing in my bathroom and the lights come up, you know all these Jetson type things. And the challenge with that, while they’re all great, I don’t live that structured of a life, not waking up into [it] every day, and I'm not going in the shower every day at the same time. And you know, I don't want to hear music all the time. So I don’t think the routineness of automation is what I was really wanting.” (D8_G)

18. Barrier 4: Difficulty Achieving Security
Remote access
Eight households currently have remote access enabled
Tension between convenience and security
Very technically savvy participants concerned about vulnerability of remote access
Door locks
Cameras

19. Simple User Groups for Future Needs
What restrictions would you place (if any) on applications you were interested in buying?
Presence based security
All other restrictions:
Adult household member
Child household member
Guest
Household technology guru

20. Implications for Research
Bandwidth Needs vs. Structural Changes

21. Implications for Research
Bandwidth Needs vs. Structural Changes
Standalone Devices vs. Home Integration
Individually managed sub-systems
Cross-device functionality challenging
Hard to incrementally add functionality

22. Implications for Research
Bandwidth Needs vs. Structural Changes
Standalone Devices vs. Home Integration
Individually managed sub-systems
Cross-device functionality challenging
Hard to incrementally add functionality
Simple Confidence-building Security vs. Desired Functionality

23. Concluding Remarks
Interviewed 14 households with home automation, DIY and Outsourced
4 Barriers to broader adoption:
Cost of ownership (Time & Money)
Inflexibility
Poor Manageability
Difficulty Achieving Security
Identify directions for future research
Eliminate the need for structural changes
Enable composition of home devices
Simple security that can be confidently configured

24. Thanks! HomeOS: Ask us if you are interested….
The Home Needs an Operating System (and a App Store)
HotNets IX
Dixon, C., Mahajan, R., Agarwal, S., Brush, A., Lee, B., Saroui, S., Bahl, V.,
Ask us if you are interested….
A.J. Brush
Bongshin Lee
Ratul Mahajan
Sharad Agarwal
Stefan Saroiu
Colin Dixon