Deriving the Usage Motivation and Personality of the Smart Home IoT System through In-depth Interviews with Heavy SmartThings Users

Abstract

Background Korean smart home market remains in the early adopter stage. This is the main obstruction for korean researchers to conduct research actual consumers. In order to observe the real life of users in the initial market has very low market penetration, it is necessary to look heavy users who are actually installing and using many enough devices deeper rather than large numbers of ordinary users. The purpose of this study is to discover various problems that can be found in smart homes in the near future environment, by interviewing actual heavy users and deriving Human-IoT system Interaction model in smart home saturated environment. Methods In this study, in order to understand the users' experience in a smart home in detail, I recruited the interviewees who are heavy users using SmartThings and have family members so that dealing with multi-user situation. Five semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted for 1 hour to 1 hour 20 minutes through non-face-to-face video interviews considering the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. To analyze the interview results, a qualitative study was conducted using Glaser's grounded theory. Results Four categories emerges from codes and concepts from the interview data: (1) desires for complete automation; (2) conditions which harmonizes activities between smart home immigrants and natives; (3) conflicts of rights of configuration within the smart home; (4) expectations and concerns of artificial intelligence. From these categories, motivation and personality of heavy users are discovered. Conclusions Based on the results, I suggested an interaction model of the smart home IoT system and some aspects that were easily overlooked in designing interaction between smart home and users: the need to (1) inform others of invasion of privacy, (2) enable flexible modification of permission level to family members and guests, (3) retain buffer zone between smart home immigrants and natives, and (4) relieve anxiety in adopting artificial intelligence technology to smart home.