Families shape smart home energy use to support good life
"You Can't Just Automate It": Negotiating and Sustaining a "Good" Family Life Through Energy Practices
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
Families have different ways of using energy at home to live comfortably and safely while caring for each other. Taiwanese families in this study shared how they adjust their energy use as schedules, people, and needs change over time. The authors found that energy habits are a kind of ongoing teamwork that isn’t evenly shared among family members. This affects what families imagine a smart home should do, emphasizing flexibility, shared values, and opportunities to change household routines together.
What this means in practice
- •For smart home device designers: Create family-oriented smart home systems that allow flexible energy use and support shared household values with room for negotiation and change.$Commercial implications: Enables development of adaptable IoT products for families who want smart homes that respect and evolve with their diverse energy practices.
- •For energy policy planners: Design household energy programs that recognize varying family responsibilities and changing needs across members, improving adoption and satisfaction.
Authors
Yang Hong, Ying-Yu Chen, Wei-Chien Chang, Yu-Hsin Chou, Sharifa Sultana
Abstract
This study examines how Taiwanese parent-child families negotiate a "good" family life through everyday energy use and imagine future smart homes that support it. We conducted in-home interviews and co-design sessions with 21 families, including 46 parents and children. We found that families pursued a good life through energy practices shaped by thrift, comfort, care, safety, and enjoyment. These arrangements were continually adapted and responded to changing bodies, schedules, people, and infrastructures. This adaptive work was unevenly distributed, which in turn shaped different smart-home imaginaries. Drawing on the lens of Nearby and adversarial design, we conceptualize adaptation as situated sociotechnical work through which families continually rework energy arrangements. We further distinguish collective goods from plural and contestable goods to show why family IoT must support shared values while preserving opportunities to question and revise household arrangements. We offer theoretical and design directions for more adaptive, participatory, and contestable family IoT.