Eindhoven University of Technology MASTER Beyond Reality
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Eindhoven University of Technology MASTER Beyond reality the effect of a virtual reality experience on the user acceptance of smart homes Honselaar, P.; Scharnigg, S.M.A.K. Award date: 2015 Link to publication Disclaimer This document contains a student thesis (bachelor's or master's), as authored by a student at Eindhoven University of Technology. Student theses are made available in the TU/e repository upon obtaining the required degree. The grade received is not published on the document as presented in the repository. The required complexity or quality of research of student theses may vary by program, and the required minimum study period may vary in duration. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain Beyond Reality The effect of a Virtual Reality experience on the User Acceptance of Smart Homes Master Thesis Colophon Master thesis Real Estate Management & Development Master Architecture, Building and Planning Department of the Built Environment Eindhoven University of Technology Authors P. (Patrick) Honselaar 0752989 S.M.A.K. (Sanne) Scharnigg 0726216 September, 2015 Supervisory committee dr.ir. B. de Vries dr.ir. P.E.W. van den Berg ir. A.J. Jessurun BEYOND REALITY THE EFFECT OF A VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE ON THE USER ACCEPTANCE OF SMART HOMES Preface In front of you lies our research report about the effect of a Virtual Reality experience on the user acceptance of Smart Homes. Before starting our graduation project, we were searching for a challenging subject in the field of Smart Homes and ICT in the built environment. Guess we found it all in this thesis. In a rather short period of time we got the chance to set up a Virtual Reality Smart Home, in which we learned more about different modelling software and how to program. For real estate students to develop a model in Virtual Reality without any prior experience and knowledge was regarded surreal and did not seem possible at the start of our graduating process, but yet we succeeded. We are very grateful for this opportunity and the fact that we could perform this thesis together, which ensured that we could challenge ourselves and achieve so much more in this final university project. The future‐oriented concept of Smart Homes has proven to be highly relevant for current society and it is hard to avoid the topic as newspapers entail related articles almost on a daily basis. We are privileged to contribute in this field of expertise through scientific research. The enthusiasm of the people around us definitely encouraged us to maintain high quality and to push ourselves to the limit. The fact that we could conduct our thesis at the department of Real Estate Management & Development in combination with the department of Design and Decision Support Systems did not only broaden our horizon scientifically, but also socially as we felt at home from day one in the research lab on the top floor of Vertigo. We want to express our gratitude towards our supervisors Bauke de Vries, Pauline van den Berg and Joran Jessurun. Having the support of three professors with three different areas of expertise really helped us in finalising this thesis. Their kindness and dedication made us feel comfortable, appreciated and motivated us to cast a critical eye over our own work. A special thanks to the 134 respondents, as this thesis could not have been realized without all those who took part in our experiment. In advance, we could not have imagined that the experiment would become so successful and that so many people would participate in and talk about our thesis. However, the biggest thanks goes out to our family and friends, who have been a continuous support throughout our careers. Martijn, Nancy, Paula & Bert, Arnout, I would like to thank my parents Carla Yara, Lenie & Bert, thanks for fitting a and Richard for the opportunity they supporting road trip in your busy provided me to study at a university schedules. Dad, mom, thank you both level. Their faith gave me the strength to for your advice, support and for keeping overcome all my obstacles. My brother me on my toes. A special thought goes Michel and sister Monique, who inspired out to my grandfather who passed away and supported me on every step of the during this project, but who would be so road. Of course, my beloved grandfather proud to know that I have become an whose enthusiasm will always remain ingenieur. Finally, I want to thank Patrick dear to me. Biggest heart goes out to for taking on this adventure with me and Sanne for being my bright and dedicated for always standing by my side. partner in crime on this smart journey. Sanne Scharnigg Patrick Honselaar September, 2015 Summary Smart Homes are presenting themselves as a new type of dwelling within the real estate market. A Smart Home is a home environment in which technology and space are integrated consequently resulting in an intelligent and comfortable way of life for its residents. Ever since its emergence, Smart Homes struggled to penetrate the real estate market and their potential has still been largely untapped. There are several reasons for this slow entrance, like costs, lack of awareness, privacy concerns, the limited interoperability of Smart Home technology, and the mismatch between the market and end‐user. All these barriers for the adoption of Smart Homes have a common ground: a low user acceptance of technologies used within Smart Homes. Therefore, the focus of the Smart Home discussion needs to be shifted from the technological to the social perspective. In order for Smart Home deployment to be widespread, the user acceptance of Smart Home technology needs to be addressed properly. In the upcoming decades, modern society faces many diverging challenges and Smart Homes might be capable of addressing some of these challenges, like aging or sustainability. Not only can Smart Homes support residents in their daily activities, they can also provide time and energy savings, convenience, and safety. Nowadays, most conducted research on Smart Home technology lays within the area of Smart Home devices, whereas research on the user acceptance is very scarce, especially within the field of the fully automated applications and (sensor) networks of devices. Creating user awareness through an acquaintance with these systems could highly benefit the implementation of Smart Homes. The formulated research question of this thesis is twofold. At first it is necessary to identify the factors affecting the intention to use of Smart Homes in order to develop a model, before examining to what extent a user experience can enhance the user acceptance and contribute to the implementation of Smart Homes. Within this research, a user experience is provided through a Virtual Reality Smart Home experiment. In order to validate the impact of the experience, a pre‐ and post‐survey are included, which are derived from a newly developed user acceptance model for Smart Homes. The scientifically substantiated claim that results obtained in Virtual Reality (VR) strongly correspond to results in real‐life situations supports the fact that VR can be deployed to expose the potential relations of the scientific user acceptance model. Since awareness and understanding are very important for user acceptance, it is vital to understand Smart Home and sensor technology. A sensor is a device that converts a physical phenomenon into an electrical or optical signal that can be quantified. Sensors can trigger actuators to start an application based on such a phenomenon, like motion, humidity or heat. There are several types of sensors and normally they do not operate as individual nodes in a Smart Home environment, but in a (wireless) network. In order to develop an accurate experiment, one holistic wireless sensor network protocol is selected to create a realistic representation of specific characteristics and features. Through research, it is identified that the wireless sensor network protocol MyriaNed is the most appropriate platform to conduct this study. MyriaNed is developed by Devlab, a company operating from within the Eindhoven University of Technology campus. Especially in its scalability, power consumption, reliability and security, being crucial characteristics for Smart Home appliances, MyriaNed distinguishes itself from other protocols. Instead of creating a user acceptance model from scratch, it is useful to understand the most common models applied for technology acceptance, like TAM, UTAUT, UTAUT‐SE, and TAUM. Based on their knowledge and the Smart Home barriers, an own model was created in which perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and facilitating conditions are the main factors affecting intention to use. The relationships between these variables can be influenced by certain personal characteristics, like gender, age, technological knowledge and social influence. As Smart Home technologies were not physically available and this study was not longitudinal, actual use could not be measured. Instead, the most important predictor of actual use, being intention to use, forms the dependent variable of the model. The survey questions necessary for the experiment were derived from the individual variables, resulting in two almost identical pre‐ and post‐surveys. Whereas personal characteristics only had to be asked once in the pre‐survey, questions involving the VR experience were included in the post‐survey. The experiment was conducted at the Eindhoven University of Technology and was held for three weeks starting from the 10th until the 30th of June 2015.