Design a Smart Home Interface

Design a Smart Home Interface
By Archie Baynton
Faculty Product Engineering & Design
Abstract
For over 150 years the primary input method for modern tech has been modeled
after the Victorian era typewriter. We still tap at skeuomorphic representations
of physical keys on a purely digital interface. But does this make sense for the
future of interface design, particularly in the home? Smart home grids require
that their control devices are both usable and acceptable. The assessment of
device usability and acceptability is often neglected due to the cost of
prototyping solutions to be submitted to end-user during the different stages of
the design process. In this context, the present paper describes a structured
User-Centered Design (UCD) approach to develop usable control devices. It
exploits advanced Tangible Augmented Reality (TAR) technique to represent
the achieved design solution and perform usability testing without increasing
development time and costs. Experimental results prove that such technology
sensibility increases timesaving compared with traditional prototyping
approaches and demonstrate its reliability to detect usability problems.
1.0 Introduction
How do we design an interface for the future? GUI‟s are here to stay, but
I believe they will do so in limited capacity and exist second to voice. A
visual interface will serve as a bridge to CUI‟s (conversational user
interfaces) just as skeuomorphism was necessary to transition people
from dial pads to touch screens.
More and more we‟re seeing the rise in smart home appliances. This
includes light bulbs, shades, sound systems, security cameras, door locks,
sensors, and many others. Yet these devices each require a different app

where you tap through a series of menus and options just to turn
something on or off. The old GUI model is failing.
But it‟s the future! Which means telling your home to wake you up at
7am and open the blinds on the non-sunny side of the room while getting
your coffee started and the TV set to the morning news shouldn‟t have to
involve you flipping through 4 apps and countless steps. You should just
say it before you go to sleep and the house effortlessly remembers to do
it.
From a user interface perspective, your voice is practically invisible and
has minimal learning curve. Good user interface designs of the future will
inherently eliminate as much of the learning curve as possible by
leveraging behaviors that users are already accustomed to. A good CUI
will backload all the heavy lifting of tapping through menus, selecting
options, and creating rules by understanding natural language, context,
and user intent.(Jason, 2015)
A smart home environment can be defined as “a dwelling incorporating a
communication network which connects the key electrical appliances and
services, and allows them to be remotely controlled, monitored or
accessed” In the context of energy efficiency, emerging smart grid
technologies have been applied to reduce the energy consumption of
electric devices installed at home, to seek out the lowest rates, and
contribute to the smooth and efficient functioning of the electric grid.
Although most of them are commercially available, the limited service
scalability, the complexity of configuration and the low usability prevent
their mass adoption. Rashidi and Cook have demonstrated that many of
these technologies are brittle and do not adapt to the user's explicit and
implicit wishes. It has been demonstrated that the success of a
management system for home energy efficiency is mostly determined by
its ability to motivate users to adopt it in everyday life. As motivation
passes through the usability and acceptability of home automation control
devices, they both become key requirements in device design.
A computer-based interface is then necessary to properly display
information and manage the system. The increased need of accessible and
usable human-computer interfaces has triggered research to develop
structured methods and related tools to evaluate their utility and usability.

Two main approaches are currently used: empirical approaches (i.e. test
methods) and analytical approaches (i.e. inspection methods). In
analytical evaluation, the testing process only involves expert analytics
performing the assessment with the help of some well-known theoretical
methods (e.g. heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, predictive
methods, etc.). Contrariwise, empirical approaches are user-focused. This
means that a set of representative sample users is directly involved for
examining and comparing alternative design solutions while experts
conduct both qualitative and qualitative evaluations. According to ISO
13407 standard, UserCentered Design (UCD) approach can be used for
robust HMI development. In fact, involving users in the design process
has been demonstrated to lead to more usable satisfying designs.
Figure 1
Notwithstanding these benefits, the problems of UCD implementation in
real product design still remain costs, development time consumption and
complexity of managing multidisciplinary teams to perform
comprehensive analysis of user behaviors. In addition, the construction of
high-fidelity interactive prototypes to conduct empirical testing at the
preliminary design stage is difficult to achieve in short time and at low
cost. Over the last ten years Virtual Reality (VR)-based technologies have
been introduced to replace physical mock-ups with virtual ones to achieve
time saving and reduced development cost. Some studies demonstrate
how VR can be useful for usability testing. Although traditional VR-

ased mock-ups provide a good visual fidelity, they lack in behavioral
simulation and natural interaction. Consequently, Mixed Reality (MR)
environments have drawn a lot of attention in the field of UCD as they
combine real and virtual worlds in various proportions and present them
as a unified whole. Within the MR framework, the Augmented Reality
(AR) technique is one of the most adopted one due to the low cost of the
technologies and to its ability to enhance the real scene with computer
graphics and emerging tactile and sound rendering displays. While there
has been substantial research on the underlying technology, user
experience and interaction techniques are poorly explored. In this context,
the present paper describes a structured UCD approach to design highly
usable control devices dedicated to manage the functionalities of smart
grid platforms for home automation. The focus of the study is on the
development of the graphical user interface (GUI) dedicated to desktop
PCs, smart phones and other personal digital assistant devices generally
used as preferred tools for software platform access and control.
To improve the efficiency of the proposed UCD approach, Tangible
Augmented Reality (TAR) techniques are exploited to virtually prototype
the conceived design solutions and carry out usability testing with sample
users. Experimental results show that designers do not require extra work
to build TAR prototypes or modify solutions to meet users' explicit and
implicit needs. TAR sensibility increases timesaving compared with
traditional prototyping approaches. The proposed approach and TAR
prototyping technique are adopted in a particular case study that is an
innovative domestic smart grid platform, called Homeline, to monitor and
manage energy at home consumptions.
The research partner is Indesit Company S.p.a, World leader
manufacturer in household appliances, that developed the Homeline
platform.(Ceccacci, Germani, & Mengoni, 2013)
2.0 The development of smart homes
Through a review of existing literature on the subject, this section sets out
the context to this paper: providing a working defi- nition for the term
„smart home‟; identifying key infrastructure choices; and outlining the
UK policy and regulatory background.

2.1 Smart homes: definition and services
A smart home is a residence equipped with a communications
network, linking sensors, domestic appliances, and other electronic
and electric devices, that can be remotely monitored, accessed or
controlled, and which provide services that respond to the needs of
its inhabitants.
Figure 2
The term „smart home‟ may, in principle, refer to any form of
residence, for example, a standalone house, an apartment, or a unit
in a social housing development. In this definition, sensors are
devices used to detect thelocation of people and objects, or to
collect data about states (e.g., temperature, energy usage, open
windows); domestic appliances refer to washing machines,
refrigerators etc.; electronic devices include phones, televisions,
and laptops; and electric devices refer to the more simple toasters,
kettles, light bulbs etc. (e.g., programmable washing machines).
The network linking these various technological devices is central
to the concept of the smart home; the existence of this
communications network (or more commonly „home area
network‟, HANconnecting and coordinating the various
technological components and information, and through which one

has the potential to operate or access all components from a remote
location (whether this be inside from a central „hub‟ or more
remotely from outside the home) is what distinguishes the smart
home from a home merely equipped with standalone high-tech
features.
Consequently, four key aspects characterise a smart home:
i) A communications network through which different
devices talk to each other;
ii) Intelligent controls to manage the system;
iii) Sensors that collect information;
iv) Smart features (e.g., intelligent heating systems
adjusting automatically to external temperature),
which respond to information from sensors or user
instructions as well as the system provider (e.g.,
remote control of appliances).
Types of services that smart homes provide to the householders
may be categorised based on users‟ needs they target or types of
technical applications . A holistic approach reveals a broader
spectrum of services (see Ref. for a review) such as security,
assisted living, health, entertainment, communication, convenience
and comfort, and energy efficiency; which we group into three
broad, overarching yet interconnected categories (Fig): energy
consumption and management; safety; and lifestyle support.
Among these services, energy consumption and management
services will form the core of services supporting the development
of smart grids.
2.2 Key infrastructure for smart homes
We began by adopting a definition for a smart home which centres
on the notion of a network connecting sensors and domestic
devices, appliances and features, and facilitating the exchange of
relevant information between these and the user. This section
presents further findings of the literature review with respect to key
infrastructure required for the smart home, including new and
existing homes.

2.2.1. The smart home network
There are two principal elements to the smart home network:
a „physical‟ connection linking the components e most often
a wired connection or a radio signal (as in the case with
„wireless‟); and a shared language by which the various
components can communicate with one another and
exchange information e a „communications protocol‟.
Different physical connections have different advantages and
limitations in terms of their data capacity, speed, distance,
cost and installation requirements. As a result, the preferred
type of connection will depend on the application or the type
of service for which it is intended. A broad range of
communications protocols also exist and vary depending on
the physical media with which they are associated (see Ref.
for a review). Different networks and protocols are
developed and championed by different manufacturers and
suppliers,1 obliging smart homeowners‟ brand loyalty.
Consequently, for example, even though ZigBee has
emerged as the leading wireless standard, several major
industry corporations support alternative technologies such
as Wi-Fi, ZWave, 6LoWPAN2.(Dalgarno & Lee,
2010)(Balta-Ozkan, Davidson, Whitmarsh, & Bicket, 2013)
3.0 Smart Kitchen Model for Energy Efficiency and Usability
Nowadays, the kitchen is the main room of the house, a
multifunctional space where people spend a lot of time to prepare
and cook meals, to eat them and store the supplies. Moreover a
kitchen can be regarded as a space for the family members to meet
together and pass time during lunch and dinner preparation. In
particular, it was estimated that the kitchen is the room where the
family spends the majority of the time (35%). The kitchen is also
the space more "dangerous": more than half of the domestic
accidents happen in the kitchen (55%). No other room of the house
is so dangerous, because in any other room the frequency of

accidents is always less than 10%. The main cause of trauma and
incidents is due to the everyday use of devices and tools of kitchen,
such as knives, oven, small appliances and cookware. Most of them
occur for distraction and scarce prevention. The kitchen and in
particular the worktop, have often insufficient lighting and this
causes loss of visibility so increased risk of accident. Furthermore,
the space above the worktop is often full of accessories and all
kinds of objects, making everyday tasks more difficult and
dangerous.
3.1 Related Work
Smart home can be defined as “a house which comprises a network
communication between all devices of the house allowing the
control, monitoring and remote access of all applications and
services of the management system” . There are a wide number of
scientific works focused on smart home, but they investigate only
one aspect such as smart object and sensors. Scientific research on
kitchen environment is still at the beginning and it has often
analyzed as part of the smart home. Many studies of sensing
systems have been developed for monitoring and controlling of
environmental parameters of a house. Ding et al. make a state of
the art of sensor technology most commonly used in smart home.
The work highlights the strengths and limitations of different
sensor technologies and focuses on the opportunities from the
perspective of technical, clinical and ethical. It emphasizes that
there is not a generic perfect mix of sensors: each case must be
evaluated independently and designed for the specific needs.
Muñoz et al. present a system that allows to control the house
through simple and unobtrusive sensors, and a multi-agent
architecture. This system gives the possibility to supervise the state
of the house and occupants, and gives instructions and guidelines
through an alert assistant. Similar work is that of Stander et al. in
which a sensor system provides an overview of the whole kitchen.
The system, through a sensors infrastructure, monitors the status of
the room and obtains information about the various devices.

3.2 System’s General Description
E-Kitchen is a new concept of "innovative kitchen" (Figure 1) in
which the technology is intended to make everyday life easier
increasing comfort, efficiency, usability and safety.
Figure 3
The system was designed through the study of three main
interactions (Figure 2): human-environment, humanmachines and
machines-environment. The study of these three aspects has
allowed to obtain a kitchen usable and accessible highly, that
implement a smart home automation system.
In particular, the work on machines-environment interaction
permitted to achieve:
The control of devices to ensure the safety of the
environment,
The control of operating parameters of devices,
The possibility to manage the status and selfdiagnosis and
auto repair,
The monitoring and optimization of energy consumption.

The second level of interaction (human-machines) is related to the
usability of the "machines" and focused on the study of:
An highly usable user interface to allow
communication/visualization of information,
System software based on User Centered Design. Finally,
the human-environment interaction has been analyzed to
improve:
The functionality and ergonomic layout,
The system integration,
The possibility to monitor user behaviour and activate alerts
in case of need or assistance.
In this way, it has been developed a kitchen environment in
which there are multiple systems that contribute to transform a
kitchen in “smart kitchen”. E-Kitchen is structured in three
systems: kitchen system, the "smart" devices system and,
finally, the home automation system.
a) Kitchen
An innovative kitchen layout has been developed to
allow a perfect integration between technology, design
and ergonomics.
Figure 4

In accordance with ergonomic approach, an
innovative layout has been designed, to prevent any
risk to the user during daily operations. In particular,
the depth of the working top has been increased
according to the specification deduced from
ergonomics (Figure 3) and the results of an
ethnographic analysis, which involved 20 people aged
between 50 and 85. In fact with the current base
cabinets, deep 60 cm, the wall units are too close to
the user's face causing the narrowing of the visual
field and increasing the risk of collision. Moreover,
the results of the behaviour analysis showed that
connections of water and sanitary system greatly
influence the layout of the kitchen and often lead to
bad design.
Besides that we need to keep your kitchen tidy and
clean to maintain a balance. Especially in kitchen you
have to keep your oven in order to provide healthy
food to your family. (bondcleaninginperth, 2015)
The worktop 80 cm deep has been then designed to
obtain a more open space, a greater freedom of
movement and a perfect view on the working plane.
On the other hand, the additional space has been very
useful to design the expansion of sanitary vacuum
which can accommodate pipes. So, the layout of the
kitchen can be separated from connections of water
and sanitary system thanks to this added
space.(Ceccacci, Menghi, & Germani, n.d.)
A kitchen is an environment equipped with different
tools and services that assist individuals and groups in
different situations, such as cooking, washing the
dishes, breakfast preparation, and also
communications. Electronic tools and services started
as simple aids, e.g., can opener, mixer, or
refrigerators, but increasingly become more complex
assistive devices [1-3]. Cooking situations are

typically characterized by some planned behavior that
follows scripts described by recipes. These recipes are
either explicit or implicit. Implicit recipes are just
remembered by individuals while explicit recipes are
externally documented in books, on notes, or by
digital media. Cooking can be a social event but it is
an individual task most of the time. Otl Aicher
distinguishes four task categories with about 250 tasks
that are performed in a kitchen:
(1) preparation,
(2) concocting,
(3) cooking and
(4) arranging .
4.0 User-Centered Design
Here we focus on two tasks: weighing (preparation
task) and mixing (concocting task). Additionally we
also look at the recipe selection and recipe tracking
task. Following Aicher, cooking is best supported if
the main activity area requires little movements and
provides enough space in immediate reach. He
distinguishes three main activity areas: formulation
area for preparation and concocting, cooking area, and
washing area. Formulation areas are provided by
tables, cooking areas by stoves, and washing areas by
tables, sinks, and/or dish washers.(Maass & Filler,
n.d.)
The design of everyday objects is not always intuitive and at times it
leaves the user frustrated and unable to complete a simple task. How
many of us have bought a VCR that we have struggled to used and
missed recording our favorite programs because we misunderstood the
instructions or had to put up with the clock blinking 12:00 because we
didn‟t know how to stop it? Do we have to put up with designs like these?

Isn‟t it possible to design systems that are more usable? „User-centered
design‟ (UCD) is a broad term to describe design processes in which endusers
influence how a design takes shape. It is both a broad philosophy
and variety of methods. There is a spectrum of ways in which users are
involved in UCD but the important concept is that users are involved one
way or another. For example, some types of UCD consult users about
their needs and involve them at specific times during the design process;
typically during requirements gathering and usability testing. At the
opposite end of the spectrum there are UCD methods in which users have
a deep impact on the design by being involved as partners with designers
throughout the design process. The term „user-centered design‟ originated
in Donald Norman‟s research laboratory at the University of California
San Diego (UCSD) in the 1980s and became widely used after the
publication of a co-authored book entitled: User-Centered System
Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction (Norman &
Draper, 1986). Norman built further on the UCD concept in his seminal
book The Psychology Of Everyday Things (POET) (Norman, 1988).
5.0 How to Involve Users in Design?
It is necessary to think carefully about who is a user and how to involve
users in the design process. Obviously users are the people who will use
the final product or artifact to accomplish a taskor goal. But there are
other users as well. The people who manage the users have needs and
expectations too. What about those persons who are affected in some way
by the use of the artifact or use the products and/or services of the
artifact? Shouldn‟t their needs and expectations be taken into
consideration in the design process? Eason (1987) identified three types
of users: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary users are those persons
who actually use the artifact; secondary users are those who will
occasionally use the artifact or those who use it through an intermediary;
and tertiary users are persons who will be affected by the use of the
artifact or make decisions about its purchase. The successful design of a
product must take into account the wide range of stakeholders of the
artifact. Not everyone who is a stakeholder needs to be represented on a
design team, but the effect of the artifact on them must be considered
(Preece, et. al, 2002). Once the stakeholders have been identified and a

thorough investigation of their needs has been conducted by performing
tasks and needs analyses, designers can develop alternative design
solutions to be evaluated by the users. These design solutions can be
simple paper and pencil drawings in the beginning phase of the process.
Listening to users discuss the alternative designs can amplify designers
understanding of the intended purpose(s) of the artifact and may provide
information that does not come out of initial interviews, observations, and
needs analysis.
Figure 5
As the design cycle progresses, prototypes (limited versions of the
product/artifact) can be produced and user tested. At this point, designers
should pay close attention to the evaluations by the users as they will help
identify measurable usability criteria. Measurable usability criteria
address issues related to the effectiveness, efficiency, safety, utility,
learnability and memorability (how long it takes to remember to perform
the most common tasks) of the product/artifact and users‟ subjective
satisfaction with it. You can see how difficult it would be for designers to
know or imagine all the usability criteria that are important to the
users.(Abras, Maloney-Krichmar, & Preece, 2004)

6.0 Conclusion
C A home network is fast becoming a mandatory inclusion in the smart
home. It’s not just for computers – a vast range of A/V products now
offer access to music and video over the internet and the home network
is the key to accessing this.
The latest TVs now provide access to internet-based video channels. Bluray
players connect to the internet to provide exclusive additional content.
And there‟s a huge world of music out there waiting for you to discover
it.
For computing at home, a wired network is still the best way to go. For
guaranteed speed, reliability and security, it is far superior to a wireless
network. Of course, the best time to install a wired network is during
building or renovating.
Smart Home Solutions will design and install your home network with
present and future capability in mind - meeting your needs in
entertainment, computing and communications now and well into the
future.
Best of all, we do it all ourselves without resorting to external IT
contractors so what you get is a complete, integrated system that does
what it is designed to do – make your lifestyle simpler and more
enjoyable.(smarthomes, 2015)
Figure 6

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