At Home with Ubiquitous Computing: Seven Challenges

The smart home offers a new opportunity to augment people’s lives with ubiquitous computing technology that provides increased communications, awareness, and functionality. Recently, a number of trends have increased the likelihood that the aware home can soon become a reality. We examine a number of challenges from the technical, social, and pragmatic domains that we feel must be overcome before the vision of the smart home, posited by ubiquitous computing research, can become a reality. Our hope in raising these issues is to create a conversation among researchers in the varied disciplines that make up ubiquitous computing. In particular, we hope to raise awareness of the existing literature on the adoption, use, and history of domestic technologies, as well as the use of situated studies, and the benefits that these can bring to bear on the design and evaluation of technologies for the home