A Critical Review of User Studies on Healthy Smart Homes

Abstract

Considerable research has been conducted on smart services and technologies over the past decades, and the realization of smart environments has been one of the important research themes in housing studies. However, there is a lack of evaluation of the effects of those technologies on user experience from a cognitive perspective. This paper reviews the evaluation methods adopted in user studies of healthy smart homes. The review of user studies would enable the consolidation of knowledge to develop appropriate evaluation strategies for investigating user experience of smart services and technologies. Through an exhaustive search on contents pages of articles, different strategies for user studies were examined that span a range of experimental settings and analysis methods. These strategies can potentially work together in complementary ways to provide insights into user experience of healthy smart homes. The review highlighted research issues on user experience to be addressed for smart environments, giving valuable insights on cognitive paradigms to develop guide for smart services and technologies, which would ultimately encourage user satisfaction and foster sensibility.

Cooperation and knowledge challenges in realizing smart homes: The case of small installer businesses

“…the smart living industry in the Netherlands. In addition, hurdles related to smart homes and smart living business models 18 and end-user acceptance 59 were left out of scope for this study.…”

Health Smart Home Services incorporating a MAR-based Energy Consumption Awareness System

“…Law et al defined the nature of UX as something individual that emerges from interacting with a product, system, service or an object. Through a critical review of user studies on health smart homes [45]inhabitants' interaction with systems should be effective, direct and easy to use-otherwise, the smart services would be perceived as uncomfortable, thus displeasing inhabitants. Elderly people have more difficulties in handling devices, and badly designed interfaces could be quickly abandoned [46].…”

Addressing Maslow’s deficiency needs in smart homes

“…The universAAL project and AALOA (Ambient Assisted Living Open Association), two initiatives supported by the European commission and started after 2010, have taken promising steps by aiming to design, develop, evaluate, standardize, and maintain a common service platform for Ambient Assisted Living 56,57 , but the implementation of support at all levels of human deficiency needs has not been included in these initiatives. In addition, a recent review stresses the understanding of end-user needs to develop effective and efficient smart-homes, but does not propose a tool or theory to implement this in design and development 3 .…”

“…Besides technology issues to be solved, business models are lacking to remove vendor locks, and to combine with other types of business (health care, entertainment, security, etc.) [2][3][4] . Even more important is the discrepancy between user needs and offered functionalities 5 .…”