Exploring opportunistic ambient notifications in the smart home to enhance quality of live

Abstract

Smart home technology became more and more widespread within recent years. They aim to make life easier and taking over unwanted tasks. In traditional homes, it is often not clear whether all windows and doors of a house are closed before inhabitants leave the home or go to sleep. However, this can be easily addressed by smart homes. We present a system based on opportunistically located ambient lights that assist inhabitants of a smart home in answering this question. In this paper, we show the concept of our system and the inhabitant-centered design process behind the development. The system was installed in a one-family smart home. We report on insights gained through data collected from this deployment over a period of six months. Within interviews, we found that the ambient light system gave inhabitants a more confident feeling about open doors/windows.