Everyday systems and devices in the home are becoming smarter. In order to better understand the challenges of deploying an intelligent system in the home, we studied the experience of living with an advanced thermostat, the Nest. The Nest utilizes machine learning, sensing, and networking technology, as well as eco-feedback features. We conducted interviews with 23 participants, ten of whom also participated in a three-week diary study. Our findings show that while the Nest was well-received overall, the intelligent features of the Nest were not perceived to be as useful or intuitive as expected, in particular due to the system's inability to understand the intent behind sensed behavior and users' difficulty in understanding how the Nest works. A number of participants developed workarounds for the shortcomings they encountered. Based on our observations, we propose three avenues for future development of interactive intelligent technologies for the home: exception flagging, incidental intelligibility, and constrained engagement.

In this paper, we investigate the requirements for designing systems to support wayfinding for visually impaired individuals. We report the results of an interview study with 20 individuals with visual impairments, asking about their way-finding tools, techniques, and obstacles. Our findings provide an account of the practices followed when navigating familiar, unfamiliar, and dynamic environments, and common breakdowns encountered during the wayfinding process. The findings from this study suggest ways of implementing a location-based system to assist in the recovery from various obstacles.

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The smart home is here. One area where smart home devices promise to deliver great benefits is in the control of home heating, ventilation, and cooling (HVAC) systems. In this paper, we seek to inform the design of future heating and cooling systems by investigating users' experiences with the Nest Learning Thermostat, a commercially available smart home device. We conducted a qualitative study where we compared people's interactions with conventional thermostats with interactions with the Nest.A key finding was that the Nest impacted users' pattern of HVAC control, but only for a while, and caused new problems in unrealized energy savings. In leveraging these findings, we create a set of design implications for EcoInteraction, the design of features and human-system interactions with the goal of saving energy.

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