INTERNATIONAL DESIGN CONFERENCE - DESIGN 2014 Dubrovnik - Croatia, May 19 - 22, 2014. DIAGNOSIS OF CURRENT SMART HOME APPLIANCE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS FOR APPLICATION OF PSS DESIGN METHODOLOGY S. Kim and J. S. Baek Keywords: smart home, smart home appliance, product-service system 1. Introduction 1.1 Background Initiated by smartphones, smartness is emerging as one of the essential values of IT products and home appliances. Home appliances to which smart technology was applied have been called Smart Home Appliances (SHA). The global market for SHA is expected to grow from 3.06 billion USD in 2011 to 15.12 billion USD in 2015 [Zpryme 2010]. This indicates that SHA business can be an opportunity for home appliance manufacturing companies to revitalize their stagnant market. In fact, many international home appliance manufacturers are introducing state-of-the-art technologies and products related to SHAs. This trend is evident at the international electronics fairs where the latest trendy SHAs are exhibited [Yoon and Jang 2012]. While the major home appliance manufacturing companies possess the advanced technologies and many things became possible (e.g. users can turn on an air conditioner out of the house or shop for groceries using a smart refrigerator) it is doubtful whether their smart solutions are indeed beneficial in users’ daily life. Sciacca [2013] argues that some features of SHAs are beneficial and attractive, but many functions of them are not desirable. Using the food management function of a smart refrigerator, for example, users can input the name, amount and expiration date of food by the touchscreen. The food inventory list prevents users from an unnecessary purchase of food and therefore contributes to reducing food wastes. In addition, notification of the expiration date will lead the users to consume their food while they are fresh. If the food management function is fully utilized, it can contribute to the efficient use of food. In reality, however, as a refrigerator is often used by multiple users and contain different types of food, the food management function using a touchscreen input system may be an additional annoying task for users. During the interviews for a smart refrigerator development project, smart refrigerator users mentioned that the food management system is attractive but operating a touchscreen, especially dragging-and-dropping icons, is inconvenient and complicated. Because of the ineffective input method, some users gave up using the function and the others utilized the function only for long-term food storage or rarely-used items [Jung 2012]. The case of smart refrigerator suggests that successful SHAs cannot be developed simply through the high-end technologies like a touchscreen or cloud computing. In order to develop products that provide values to users, the notion of SHAs and how to develop them need to be clarified. 1.2 Smart home appliances and smart home Although there is not a consensus on what SHA is or how it should be in home appliance industry or research field yet, a number of practitioners and researchers have suggested the definition and the DESIGN METHODS 263 features of SHAs according to their experiences and perspectives. Rijsdijk and Hultink [2009] and Kango et al. [2002] focus on the sensing functions and the communication ability of SHAs. According to Rijsdijk and Hultink, SHAs are defined as “products that contain information technology and therefore able to collect, process and produce information.” In addition, they suggest 7 dimensions of product smartness: autonomy, adaptability, reactivity, multi-functionality, ability to cooperate, humanlike interaction and personality. Kango et al. define a SHA as “an appliance whose data are available to all concerned (all the actors in the appliance life cycle) at all times throughout its life cycle.” Kango et al. [2002] regard SHAs as the sources of data required to provide the users and producers with various services. In order to play such a role, advanced ICT technologies should be applied. Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers [2009] identifies SHAs in terms of the smart grid system. They describe SHAs as “a modernization of the electricity usage system of a home appliance so that it monitors, protects and automatically adjusts its operation to the needs of its owner.” Moreover, they point out some key features of SHAs involving automatic adjustment, communication and customized functions. Meanwhile, Yoon and Jang [2012] define SHAs as “home appliances which can provide customized contents and smart home service functions with the network connection and various service controlling functions,” and can automatically adjust to the situation to provide optimized performance. In summary, SHAs are home appliance products which can fulfill users’ needs better by providing customized services through the communication with users, other products or service providers in society, and reaction or automatic adjustment to the changes caused by users or environmental factors. Another approach to understanding SHA is the perspective regarding SHAs as “the components of Smart Home.” Yoon and Jang claim that Smart Home has evolved from home automation, and the home appliances constructing a Smart Home are also transforming into SHAs [Yoon and Jang 2012]. While appliances in the home automation system were developed focusing on function implementation rather than user benefits or usability, many SHAs have also suggested the new lifestyle patterns to consumers. Harper [2003] argues that the role of the consumer electrics manufacturers as one of the new main players of the smart home market needs to be emphasized. Traditionally, electrical equipment suppliers who provide switches, sockets, distribution boards and the rest have dominated the smart home market. Nonetheless, the high initial investment for the smart home construction was regarded as one of the obstacles of the popularization of smart home. People realized that changing their home appliances into SHAs one by one is more affordable and easier way to set up a smart home than building or remodeling a house. As the SHA manufacturers are leading the innovations of the smart home industry, exploring the properties and the issues of smart home will help them understand and develop SHAs. In addition to the high initial investment cost, the following factors impede the growth of the smart home market [Gann et al. 1999], [Harper 2003]: The first factor is technology push without deep understanding of users’ needs. To stimulate users to invest in smartizing their homes, it is necessary to understand the user requirements and to satisfy them through their value propositions rather than developing the technology-oriented products. Smart home solutions should be able to fulfill the real user needs [Barlow and Gann 1998], and understanding the users’ needs will be a challenge for the manufacturers and the suppliers in market development [Gann et al. 1999]. In this context, the importance of services as an effective means to fulfill the user needs was addressed in several studies. In considering the elements of smart homes, service field which indicates the connection to external services was counted as one of them [Harper 2003]. Suppliers have to contrive how to make the customers realize the benefits of smart homes through delivering products and services [Gann et al. 1999]. From the smart home strategy of an international home appliance manufacturing company dealing with not only the product-related benefits but also the service-related values, it can be inferred that a service is being perceived as a necessity for the competitive smart home solutions from the industrial perspective as well as the academic view point [Gärtner 2006]. The most essential condition to establish consumer trust and develop market is “the ability to provide services to support the use of new products and systems.” Reflecting its dominant position, service providers are nominated as another new main player of the smart home market [Harper 2003]. 264 DESIGN METHODS The second barrier of the smart home market is a challenging integration of different stakeholders and products. Basically, building and remodeling a house require the participation of stakeholders from designers and engineers to installers and financiers. Furthermore, the ability to provide a new and beneficial service including the required functions is significant for smart homes to satisfy users’ need. In order to provide diverse services, various stakeholders are also involved in the smart home business: social services providers, healthcare experts, telecommunication companies and others [Gann et al. 1999]. The integration among home appliances is also indispensable. Manufacturers have concentrated on improving the internal intelligence of the standalone products without adequate consideration of the costs and benefits of integrating home appliances. However, lately some smart products and future scenarios of home appliance companies began to display the capability of the communication and the cooperation among SHAs and home systems: for example, automatic interaction between a cooking stove and an extractor fan [Gann et al. 1999]. For harmonious cooperation among diverse stakeholders and high functionality of SHAs through the interactive cooperation, smart home should be treated as an integrated system, and intercorporating standards or protocols for the smooth communication and the cooperation is necessary. 1.3 PSS approach to SHA development