Exploring Communal Technology Use in the Home

Abstract

Device use in smart homes is becoming increasingly communal, requiring cohabitants to navigate a complex social and technological context. In this paper, we report findings from an exploratory survey grounded in our prior work on communal technology use in the home [4]. The findings highlight the importance of considering qualities of social relationships and technology in understanding expectations and intentions of communal technology use. We propose a design perspective of social expectations, and we suggest existing designs can be expanded using already available information such as location, and considering additional information, such as levels of trust and reliability.Author Keywords communal technology use, smart home, multi-user CCS Concepts•Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing; Empirical studies in ubiquitous and mobile computing; •Security and privacy → Social aspects of security and privacy;

"You Just Assume It Is In There, I Guess": Understanding UK Families' Application and Knowledge of Smart Home Cyber Security

“…Apthorpe et al [2] found, via a study involving 13 interviews and a survey of 508 individuals, that the lack of nuanced sharing solutions for home IoT devices meant that households were required to fall back to "social resolution techniques", such as agreeing not use particular features, in order that ongoing use remains acceptable for all involved. Agreement and discussion from all participants about the goals and requirements of a device is a fundamental part of what Kraemer et al [35] refer to as "group efficacy", a key element of acceptable multi-user device management. However, power dynamics need to be recognized as a limiting factor in group efficacy: Bernd et al [4] report that nannies working within a family context did not consider themselves to have enough power in the relationship with parents -their employers -to ask for smart surveillance systems to be switched off.…”

“…Recently, research has focused upon the various usability and privacy issues of the multi-use of home IoT devices [4,11,24,35,72]. 1 The privacy of all people living within a home is of key importance when considering home IoT devices, and keeping data that is intended to be private out of the public domain is fundamental.…”

Transferability of Privacy-related Behaviours to Shared Smart Home Assistant Devices

“…Use of smart assistants depends on spatial and temporal factors, such as where the device is located and when in the day it is used [17]. Research into the social context of smart home devices notes a reliance on existing work or social relationships to determine who manages the technologies [15], adding that the amount of control given to a user is often determined by technical ability and device familiarity. Primary or more knowledgeable users may accommodate less technically capable users and guest users.…”

“…Within a smart home, where consumer Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are used, these smart assistants learn on increasing amounts of data to become more useful ( [15], [17], [21], [32], [37]). Smart assistants such as the Amazon Echo can gather audio data, location data, log queries, and access linked third-party apps [2].…”

“…sonably expect to relax their privacy behaviours, as opposed to more formal environments like the workplace [15], [17], [37]. Smart assistants are often shared amongst multiple users, where one user may be more knowledgeable about technology than others [15], [22], [29], [31].…”