Control vs Convenience: Critical Factors of Smart Homes

In this paper we investigate four aspects that govern user attitudes about Smart Homes: Control, Privacy, Security and Convenience. Smart Homes increase the level of convenience or security but do not come without drawbacks. Since Smart Homes are used in an integral part of people’s lives we expect fear and distrust towards too much automation in this area. We expect these feelings to be related to the interconnection of these four aspects in a way that causes the increase of one factor to result in the decrease of another. We conducted twelve interviews, based on scenarios. Each scenario combines two or more of these four dimensions in order to estimate the future users ’ fears and concerns. The result of the study is that everyday users want support for the boring housework, but are afraid to use complex systems. We found interdependency between the four aspects, making it hard for Smart Homes to be deployed on a larger scale anytime soon. Finding ways to create balanced systems that provide high security and convenience with only a moderate loss of privacy and control might result in better and wider spread Smart Home systems