Talking back to buildings: interfacing for sentient environments

We explore in this paper the requirements and functionalities of user interfaces for sentient environments. We compare a number of commercial user-interface products for building control systems. Thereby, we consider three aspects, namely control options, information types, and hardware. The outcome of this comparison is expected to serve as the starting point for developing a new generation of user interface models to promote higher levels of connectivity between occupants and sentient environments.