Who's In Control? Interactions In Multi-User Smart Homes

Adoption of commercial smart home devices is rapidly increasing, allowing in-situ research in people's homes. As these technologies are deployed in shared spaces, we seek to understand interactions among multiple people and devices in a smart home. We conducted a mixed-methods study with 18 participants (primarily people who drive smart device adoption in their homes) living in multi-user smart homes, combining semi-structured interviews and experience sampling. Our findings surface tensions and cooperation among users in several phases of smart device use: device selection and installation, ordinary use, when the smart home does not work as expected, and over longer term use. We observe an outsized role of the person who installs devices in terms of selecting, controlling, and fixing them; negotiations between parents and children; and minimally voiced privacy concerns among co-occupants, possibly due to participant sampling. We make design recommendations for supporting long-term smart homes and non-expert household members.