Tangible User Interfaces in the Smart Home Environment Exploring the User Experience of Instant Smart Lighting System Control Iris Bataille Interaction Design One-year Master 15 ECTS Spring semester 2020 Supervisor: Maliheh Ghajargar Abstract Smart technologies are becoming ubiquitous and more complex in home environments, which brings the challenge for interaction designers to ensure a pleasant user experience for smart homes. Therefore, this thesis explores how different types of tangible user interfaces influence the user experience of smart lighting system control. After conducting research in this context, two different tangible user interfaces were designed: one counter device using tokens and one hand-held device using embodied metaphors. These devices were validated through testing their engagement, ease of task performance, meaningfulness of representation and controls, as well as richness of interaction and human skills. It was found that the counter device creates the best user experience when performing more complicated tasks in a frequent long-time use scenario, while the hand-held device creates the most pleasant experience when performing less complicated tasks in an infrequent use scenario. 2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 4 2. Background .................................................................................................................. 6 2.1 Theory .................................................................................................................. 6 2.2 Canonical Examples ........................................................................................ 8 3. Methodology ............................................................................................................... 12 3.1 Project Plan ........................................................................................................ 12 3.2 Methods ............................................................................................................. 13 4. Design Process ........................................................................................................... 15 4.1 Analysis .............................................................................................................. 16 4.2 Ideation .............................................................................................................. 17 4.3 Conceptualization ........................................................................................... 21 4.4 Realization ....................................................................................................... 26 4.5 Validation ......................................................................................................... 30 5. Results .......................................................................................................................... 37 5.1 Tangible User Interfaces for Instant Smart Home Control .................... 37 5.2 Results from Validating the Tangible User Interfaces ............................ 38 6. Discussion ................................................................................................................... 41 6.1 Tangible User Interfaces ................................................................................. 41 6.2 User Validation ................................................................................................ 41 6.3 Other Results from the User Validation .................................................... 42 6.4 Future Work .................................................................................................... 42 7. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 43 8. Acknowledgments .................................................................................................. 44 9. References .................................................................................................................. 45 Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 47 1. Final Digital Context Prototype Code ............................................................ 47 2. User Validation Study Set-up .......................................................................... 49 3. Informed Consent Form .................................................................................. 50 3 1. Introduction Smart homes are domestic architectural spaces in which devices and systems can be controlled automatically by using smart technologies (Allen et al., 2001). These homes are becoming bigger and more complex, for example by increasing the number of smart devices such as smart lamps. This brings an interesting challenge for interaction designers to make sure that the user still has a pleasant experience while operating smart home systems (Luria, Hoffman & Zuckerman, 2017). There is a trend in increasing the smart home system autonomy, which can be defined as the ability to automatically and remotely control basic home functions and features (Brennan, McCullagh, Galway & Lightbody, 2015). However, the downside of this is that users can lose the sense of control over the state of their home (Koskela & Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, 2004). This is why this thesis project is not focused on home automation, but on tangible interfaces that enable users to control their smart homes. Tangible interfaces can facilitate a richer way of interaction, which increases the understandability and trustability of smart home devices (Angelini, Mugellini, Abou Khaled & Couture, 2018). However, in a comparative study, it was found that the usability of tangible interfaces is still a significant design challenge (Luria et al., 2017). Therefore, the usability and user experience of different kinds of tangible user interfaces in the smart home environment will be further explored in this thesis project. There are different ways to control smart homes. A distinction can be made between two different types of smart home control. The first type is pattern control, which is a way of programming smart home automation (Koskela & Väänänen-Vaino-Mattila, 2004). Several interfaces have been designed with this goal in mind, such as Smart Home Cards (Tada, Takahashi & Shizuki, 2016). The second type is to control and adapt the smart home instantly. Examples of these interfaces are SensePods (Khan & Zualkernan, 2018) and Ikea’s Shortcut Buttons (Ricker, 2019). Further descriptions of the examples can be found in chapter 2.2. In this project, the focus will be on the latter, instant smart home control. So this thesis aims to explore the user experience of tangible interfaces for instantly controlling smart homes. To make this research more specific and narrowed down, the use scenario of controlling a smart lighting system is chosen to focus on just one sub-area of smart home devices. This results in the research question: How can different types of tangible user interfaces influence the user experience of instant smart lighting system control? To answer this research question, two different types of tangible user interfaces will be analyzed through testing 1. their engagement 2. ease of task performance 3. meaningfulness of representation and controls 4. richness of interaction and human skills. By answering this research question, this thesis aims to contribute to the field of interaction design through generating knowledge about the differences in user experience between different types of tangible user interfaces. This knowledge can be used for future development of new tangible smart home user interfaces. Next to the goal of contributing to the field of interaction design, the topic for this thesis was also chosen because of personal interests. My interests are in tangible interaction, design for the everyday life, user-centered design and IoT, which are topics combined in this thesis project. In this thesis project report, the background will be explained first by introducing the theory about user control and experience in the smart home and tangible interaction. Next to that, 4 several canonical examples are discussed. After that, the project plan and the methods used during this project will be introduced. Then, the process of this thesis is described, which is followed by the results produced during the process. Lastly, the project process and results will be discussed and a conclusion is drawn. 5 2. Background In this section, an overview of the background of this thesis is given by discussing theory related to user control in smart homes, the user experience of smart homes and tangible interaction. Next to that, several canonical examples related to this thesis are reviewed. 2.1 Theory 2.1.1 User Control in the Smart Home Smart homes are domestic architectural spaces in which devices and systems can be controlled automatically by using smart technologies (Allen et al., 2001). This is an application of ubiquitous computing, the integration of multiple technical devices into the everyday physical world (Weiser, 1993). These devices are often interconnected, which makes smart homes an application of the Internet of Things (IoT) as well (Xia, Yang, Wang & Vinel, 2012). Smart homes offer a better quality of life by optimizing user comfort at home (Alam, Reaz & Ali, 2012). However, these homes are becoming bigger