Design Guidelines for Technology-Mediated Social Interaction in a Presence Sensing Physical Space

Technology for building smart homes is here today; however, a solid understanding of how people will interact in these spaces is not. In this paper, we present our research into designing a smart living space that focuses on inherent social behavior and in turn facilitates social interactions. We start by explaining our initial design scenario, and then discuss the process whereby we obtained data about user needs in a smart living space. We then offer six principles for building an environment that assists in home activities and explain how these principles could be applied to similar projects. We walk through selected parts of our design and then offer recommendations and future directions for smart living space research.

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