Smart Home vs. Home Automation
The future of our living seams to be automated and driven by artificial intelligence.
We are increasingly interested in optimising our living space.
We are more connected and we spend a significant time of our lives on the internet. The comfort of our homes offers us an escape from the connected world even though our smartphones are close to us in almost every aspect of our lives (indoor or outdoor).
The Internet of Things promises an optimised, efficient lifestyle. Products like robot vacuum cleaners, fridges that know what’s missing from them and can order groceries online, surveillance systems for indoor are some examples of new products that are on demand at the moment. In technology retail stores, these systems are included under the generic term of home automation. The term smart home started as an umbrella term for technology-driven innovation targeting the living space. “Smart home” does not cover only convenience technology, but also assistive technology. In the past, there was a clear distinction between “home automation” — the retail term which covers convenience technology and the “smart home” — an almost sci-fi concept term which defined the artificially intelligent home that helps people live better.
We want our homes more automated and more “smart”
Starting mid 2017, the two terms almost converge. This is the time when the Internet of things is penetrating the retail market. Remember the ‘smart’ light bulb that could guess your mood? Or the home assistants that can read out loud the ingredients and steps of a recipe, or save your dinner when things don’t work out?
“Ok Google /Hey Alexa … order a pizza”
In 2019 the two terms are almost indistinguishable in the perception of most people. Most of the searches on internet about things related to the smart home term also reflect under the home automation term. As opposed to 2004, we are no longer talking about a remote control garage door but connected doors that show pictures of the people knocking on it, on your smartphone, personalised physical training videos connected to your exercise equipment that measure and guide you through the optimum workout, or recipes that are easy to cook and are in line with your dietary needs.
Collecting information from the internet and statistically processing it into knowledge are key actions that our smart home devices make in order to help us in fulfilling the tasks we request from them. The trends above show that starting January 2019, there is an increased interest in smart homes that peaks when international technology shows display their latest innovation: Amazon Sales (early January, Global); INTERSEC (end of January, UAE); Hannover Messe (end of April, German); CEBIT Hannover (end of June, Germany); etc.
What could determine such a close correlation between the two concepts?
My primary assumption is that the two concepts were intermittently used by media when describing technologies that helped us in our home. Secondly, I assume that we assign the higher meaning to the word automation, which includes low-level decision making, or artificial intelligence (a cleaning robot should not get stuck in the furniture, a smart fridge should not order, or suggest expensive purchases that go over the usual budget, etc.)
This type of close correlation is manifested globally, which leads me to extend my assumptions to the theory that the hype of artificial intelligence present in our lives, as described very often in the media, has changed our perception off and demand from automation. Instead of looking for a coffee machine with a timer, more and more we are looking for a coffee machine with an app that knows us and can make our coffee just the way we like it, every morning.
2020 — total convergence but lower interest
The terms ‘Smart home’ and ‘home automation’ have merged 100% at global scale. The smart home means an automated home, as the two terms completely converged. Digital skills are on the rise and so is the demand of digital and automation services at homes.
For example, this is true for Austria and Switzerland, two of the leading European countries in digitalisation and digital services. Almost all government and administrative services are provided on site and online. The need of digital services is increasingly expected in at home as well, as shown by the data below.
Can you form other theories based on the presented data? Please comment below.
How it’s made
This article was written with the help of the trendy dots research platform — “your first step to market research”.
The data set comes from Google Trends and the additional research was done through internet searches. The platform offers an intuitive, easy to use way for getting informed about the things that matter. When you are interested in human/consumer behaviour towards companies, products, world events, or innovative concepts, my td. trends research platform can help you with quick and easy insights.
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