Decision modeling in smart home design the importance of lifestyle in an individual’s design decision

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a framework for decision modeling of users in smart home design. Individual’s preferences that derived from both of his/her “Current Lifestyle” and “Future Lifestyle” are considered as the main factors that influence the final decision, Such that the compatibility of the choice alternatives with these preferences sets up the final decision for the individual. We tested this framework with a virtual experiment. The experiment was conducted among 250 respondents, who were asked to explore a smart home in a virtual environment and then to make a decision among design alternatives for different parts of a smart home. Choices and the underlying effective factors were evaluated by MultiNomial Logit model. The outcomes adequately ascertained the proposed framework. Understanding of the effective factors on the user’s design decisions for a smart home helps designers to incorporate design alternatives with users’ demands in the real world.