Why Smart Homes Can't Automate a Happy Family, Study Finds

Researchers conducted in-home interviews and co-design sessions with 21 Taiwanese parent-child families, including 46 parents and children, to examine how families negotiate a "good" family life through everyday energy use — and how they imagine future smart homes that support it. They found families pursued a good life through energy practices shaped by thrift, comfort, care, safety, and enjoyment, and that these arrangements were continually adapted in response to changing bodies, schedules, people, and infrastructures. That adaptive work was unevenly distributed, which in turn shaped different smart-home imaginaries. Drawing on Nearby and adversarial design, the authors conceptualize adaptation as situated sociotechnical work through which families continually rework energy arrangements, and 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. They offer theoretical and design directions for more adaptive, participatory, and contestable family IoT.