Abstract This study, with 19 households, set out to analyse the expected benefits and anticipated challenges to the introduction of smart home technology (SHT), and to compare these to post-use experiences after living with the technology for 1 year. Contextual interviews were undertaken with householders during the installation of a range of SHT, and again approximately 1 year later, when householders had the option to keep the technology or have some or all of it removed. This identified whether initial expectations were met, whether initial concerns persisted and whether new issues, concerns, and benefits (that had not been initially anticipated) arose after an extended period of use. Initial expectations from all households were high—related to comfort, convenience, improved control, energy demand reduction, and integration of technologies. There were also many initial concerns, including reliability, usability, and how these systems would be ‘domesticated’ to fit existing routines. After living with the systems for 1 year, many expectations were met, but the added value (and hence the match between expectations and reality) was higher for households with varied routines and large, partially occupied houses. Some of the anticipated challenges—such as concerns over aesthetics—largely disappeared, issues to do with the awkward location of network components persisted and new issues arose relating to the usability of some components and the time and effort required to configure them. Recommendations are given to maximise the added value that SHT can provide to householders.

One of the enduring problems of researching and designing digital technologies for the home is that both media technologies and uses tend to be dispersed spatially and temporally throughout the environment and routines of home.This raises a number of methodologically challenging issues: how digital media technologies are situated amongst other technologies; how materialities and textures shape the experience of home; the ways in which practices of media use are entangled with the other activities and practices that are part of the routines of home; and how digital media content and communications create part of a wider ecology of communication and interaction in home environments.In this article, we outline a methodological and practical response to these questions and describe its application through the development of tailored interdisciplinary research methods. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS• This paper describes research undertaken within an interdisciplinary energy project that is seeking to explore domestic energy consumption and everyday digital media use through the individual and combined lenses of engineering, design, social and computer sciences.• The paper describes the interdisciplinary application of two methods that were enacted within participants' homes: the interactive floor plan method; and video ethnography tour and re-enactment methods.• The benefits of embedding design research in this way are discussed in relation to studying the use of technology in the home and recent research trends in ubiquitous computing.

Sociological appropriations of practice theory as applied to sustainable design have successfully problematized overly simplistic and individualistic models of consumer choice and behavior change. By taking everyday practices as the principal units of analysis, they move towards acknowledging the socially and materially structured nature of human activity. However, to inform sustainable HCI we also need to understand how practices are part of wider experiential environments and flows of practical activity. In this article, we develop an approach rooted in phenomenological anthropology and sensory ethnography. This approach builds on theories of place, perception and movement and enables us to situate practices, and understand practical activity, as emplaced within complex and shifting ecologies of things. Drawing on an interdisciplinary study of domestic energy consumption and digital media use, we discuss ethnographic and design practice examples. We demonstrate how this theoretical and methodological framework can be aligned with the 3rd paradigm of HCI.

Electric cookers and kettles are often the highest electricity consumers amongst household appliances. Cooking requires several interactions with these appliances, and furthermore people's behaviours play an important role in the energy consumption. This research is seeking to understand people's behaviours whilst cooking and also identify the determinants of these behaviours. Energy monitoring, video recording and semi-structured questionnaires were used to gather this information. This knowledge will inform the development of an intervention aiming at reducing energy expenditure.

This paper illustrates how the concept of mobility can be used to consider how contextual factors shape user requirements for mobile ICT. The spatial, temporal and contextual mobility of construction professionals is described based on fieldwork conducted within the UK. A distinction between the mobility of workers when they are operating remotely within a geographically distributed team and when they are working cooperatively with others co-located on site is reported. The implications of this finding are discussed in relation to the mobile ICT needs of construction professionals.

This paper describes the opportunities for location aware computing to enhance information capture and use within the construction industry. The construction industry is characterized as being slow to take up innovative mobile ICT, despite the highly mobile workforce who must collaborate with a range of on and off-site personnel, and make use of large volumes of information. Based on fieldwork and workshop activities within COMIT (a large-scale mobile IT project within the construction industry), the information used within two key business processes - health and safety audits, and site design problem resolution - is outlined, and the opportunities for support by location aware computing discussed. Some potential challenges are also identified, as is the need to understand how to provide real value (as opposed to just information) to the end user.