Good UX design and trust are key to unlocking the potential of smart home devices
The user experience of smart home devices leaves much to be desired. What is missing is good HMI design in the smart home that is oriented toward the needs of people rather than competition between companies, and a software platform that people trust.
Rarely are vision and reality further apart than in the so-called smart home. While Hollywood movies like Her show the protagonist portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix living in a fully connected smart home (including an AI assistant voiced by Scarlett Johansson) in the not-too-distant future, today’s smart home consists of a whole gallery of apps or an unreliable voice assistant that often completely misunderstands instructions.
However, smart devices in the home have huge potential. Consumers don’t just expect convenience from smart home devices; they are also seeking increased security or sustainability. This technology is already available. Almost everything can be controlled in a “smart” way. Lights, heating, refrigerators, front door locks or music systems: there is hardly a device or switch that cannot be controlled remotely, or even automated, with your own voice or via an app. Yet is that all that smart means?
The vision and reality of the smart home are worlds apart
In reality, the smart home that has been promised for many years fails not primarily because of the technology, but because of the usability. Apart from a few early adopters, no one wants to install yet another app for every new device. So far, smart has tended to mean setting up every little detail for every device from different manufacturers on your smartphone (and creating the umpteenth user profiles in all the different ecosystems). Instead, devices that are actually smart would be intuitive to use and provide a consistent and seamless user experience in every room of a house.
In a world where hardware and software are merging, it remains to be seen whether the household appliance giants of yesteryear can salvage their lead in the digital age. Just as Volkswagen is being put under pressure by Tesla in the automotive world, new competitors are also emerging for companies like Bosch.
Consumers’ trust in technology is declining
This competition not only affects usability, but also compatibility, which would be the key to a seamless smart home experience in the future. However, this leads directly to the next dead end, because the few companies that enable a centralized smart home ecosystem are those that largely generate their money from user data insights. Hey Google; Hey Alexa!
The overwhelming power of large digital corporations is hampering consumer trust. The Edelman Trust Barometer reported that trust in tech is globally down by four percent compared to the previous year.
Meanwhile, 61 percent of respondents said that the pace of technological advancements is too quick.
Among other things, data privacy concerns with smart home assistants could play a role.
So what does it take to unlock the potential of smart home technologies? The answers are simultaneously simple and complex: good design and trust. Good design should make people’s lives easier. The HMI design of smart devices in our homes must be so intuitive that we actually feel at home; human-machine interfaces in our homes must be radically oriented to our needs. On top of this, we will only bring smart home devices into our homes if we trust them to be secure and handle our data responsibly. Good design and trust are the keys to the smart home of the future — and nicer voices from the AI assistants wouldn’t be a bad thing, either.
Good design should make people’s lives easier — at Incari we are convinced of this. We are a Berlin-based software provider that creates the HMI development platform Incari Studio. We create the required tools and technologies necessary for developing future-based HMI systems in various industries. InterFaces is a platform to explore what such systems can or will look like at some point in the future. Follow us on Twitter: Incari_HMI, Follow us on Instagram: Incari_HMI, Follow us on LinkedIn: Incari HMI Development.
