Seemingly simple smart home sensor data, such as temperature or humidity, can lead to conflicts between involved stakeholders, such as users, their partners, or landlords. To understand potential mitigation strategies in product design, we conducted seven scenario-based workshops with 38 tech practitioners and academics. We asked them to prototype smart home device packages that showcase how conflicts caused by simple sensor data could be minimized in product design. The strategies they employed are: 1) reducing data granularity on the visual layer; 2) minimizing data storage; 3) offering more sensor data explainability; 4) increasing trust through strict data regulations. We contribute applicable design strategies for mitigating tensions for simple sensor systems developed by tech experts illustrated with examples.

An ongoing mystery of HCI is how do well-intentioned designers consistently enable products with unintentionally evil consequences. Using “questionable values” as a lens, we retell and analyze four design scenarios for smart homes that were created by participants with an IoT toolkit we designed. The selected design scenarios reveal practices that violate principles of responsible smart home design. Through our analysis we show (1) how participants explore sensor-driven objectification of the home then leverage data for surveillance, nudging, and control over others; (2) how the dominant technosolutionist narratives of efficiency and productivity ground such questionable values; (3) and how the materiality of mass-produced sensors pre-mediates questionable design scenarios. We discuss how to attend to and utilize questionable values in design: Making space for questionable values will empower design researchers to better “look around corners”, anticipating tomorrow's concerns and forestalling the worst of their harms.

The workshop investigates two major boundaries within HRI design and research: Firstly, we aim to cross the boundaries of engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration of such divergent disciplines as engineering, design, psychology, philosophy and sociology. Secondly, we aim to cross the boundaries of HRI design and social contexts of use - often referred to as ‘real world’ environments. This endeavor is not new, however we aim for approaching these two boarders of HRI research and design more systematically, e.g. by providing new methodological impulses. The idea of “configuring” has a long tradition in Science and Technology Studies (STS) to describe how potential users and use cases are shaped and in turn reshaped (configured) throughout technology design - be it explicitly or accidentally. Given HRI is becoming deeper integrated in ‘real world’ contexts, such as public spaces, homes and care facilities, we argue for the need for a re-configuration. This includes a critical reflection of material, procedural and methodological implications that shape future users within HRI design practices - for and together with people.

Simple smart home sensors, e.g. for temperature or light, increasingly collect seemingly inconspicuous data. Prior work has shown that human sensemaking of such sensor data can reveal domestic activities. Such sensemaking presents an opportunity to empower people to understand the implications of simple smart home sensors. To investigate, we developed and field-tested the Guess the Data method, which enabled people to use and make sense of live data from their homes and to collectively interpret and reflect on anonymized data from the homes in our study. Our findings show how participants reconstruct behavior, both individually and collectively, expose the sensitive personal data of others, and use sensor data as evidence and for lateral surveillance within the household. We discuss the potential of our method as a participatory HCI method for investigating design of the IoT and implications created by doing data work on home sensors.

We present Sensorstation, a research product to explore the effect of smart sensors and services on the communal life within a shared apartment. Sensorstation utilizes wireless sensors and a shared output device displaying a steady data stream of sensor based notifications. It was deployed on the kitchen table in a shared apartment for 19 days to enable communal residents to co-design and to co-speculate on smart sensors and services in the context of their shared apartment. We synthesize and interpret findings to illustrate how residents created positive connections between each other, while simultaneously exercising self-monitoring, control over others, and contemplating reward systems and penalties. Our work contributes to a nuanced understanding of smart technology for shared apartments. We argue that design has an obligation to consider smart technology that acknowledges boundaries and to provide negotiation spaces to configure agency.

Research on product experience has a history in investigating the sensory and emotional qualities of interacting with objects. However, this notion has not been fully expanded to the design space of co-designing smart objects. In this paper, we report on findings from a series of co-design workshops where we used the toolkit Loaded Dice in conjunction with a card set that aimed to support participants in reflecting the sensory qualities of domestic smart objects. We synthesize and interpret findings from our study to help illustrate how the workshops supported co-designers in creatively ideating concepts for emotionally valuable smart objects that better connect personal inputs with the output of smart objects. Our work contributes a case example of how a co-design approach that emphasizes situated sensory exploration can be effective in enabling co-designers to ideate concepts of idiosyncratic smart objects that closely relate to the characteristics of their domestic living situations.

Cubic shapes play an astonishing role in the design of tangible interactive devices. Due to our curiosity for this widespread design preference lasting over thirty years, we constituted a literature survey of papers, books and products since the late 1970s. Out of a corpus of fourty-seven papers, books and products that propose cubic shapes for tangible interactive devices we trace the origins of cubicle tangibles and highlight the rationale for their application. Through a comparative study, we analyze the properties of this shape for tangible interaction design and classify these along the themes of: Manipulation as Input, Placement in Space as Input, Arrangement, Multifunctionality, Randomness, Togetherness & Variations, Physical Qualities, Container, and Pedestal for Output. We propose a taxonomy for cubic shaped tangible interactive devices based on the reviewed contributions, in order to support researchers and designers in their future work of designing cubic shaped tangible interactive devices.