It Should Just Work : Research Through Design With Children About Smart Home Interactions

Abstract: A smart home is a term for everyday appliances connected to each other by a hub or the internet. By research through design, this project aims to understand how children can be included in the design process and seen as users affected by the current smart home products but don’t have their own means to communicate with them. By conducting interviews and then moving on to co-design workshops, it was possible to understand and identify the design opportunities in the project. Based on the insight from interviews, most children don’t have a way to interact with a smart object in their own home. The design was pushed toward understanding how we can involve children in the interactive design process. This thesis project has been focused on research, specifically research through design. The main goal has not been to develop an artefact at the end of the project but rather to create knowledge around how we can involve children when designing smart homes. The findings of this study show that the children participating cared more about the actions they wanted to do in a specific room rather than how to interact with the room itself. However, some ideas came up when asked for particular interactions or devices.