"Like a Family Member Who Takes Care of Me" Users' Anthropomorphic Representations and Trustworthiness of Smart Home Environments

Abstract

-Within the last years the concept of trust has attracted increased attention in the field of smart home environments. However, little is known about what determines trustworthiness in this context. For this reason the objective was to examine mental models in terms of anthropomorphic perception of smart home environments and its relation to trustworthiness. Two studies (N=36) were carried out in the Future Care Lab, a simulated intelligent home environment. We used the teach-back method to help participants to talk about the smart home environment technology and asked to generate a metaphor of an experienced home-monitoring scenario. Finally, we applied linguistic analysis of responses to detect anthropomorphic characteristics. In general, results demonstrate inspiring metaphors related to the personal assistance system, e.g. " like an airbag… " or " like a family member… " , which might be useful for future interface designs and approaches of communication in the context of smart home environments. However, no relation of anthropomorphism and trustworthiness could be found. Therefore, we suggest an anthropomorphic threshold, which should be investigated by using an improved method and trust scale.