The Goal: Smart People, Not Smart Homes

At MIT, a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from the House_n Consortium is studying how to create pervasive computing environments for the home. We are developing technologies and design strategies that use contextaware sensing to empower people by providing information when and where decisions and actions can be made. Contrary to many visions of future home environments in the literature, we advocate an approach that uses technology to teach as opposed to using technology primarily for automated control. We have designed and constructed a live-in laboratory (or “living laboratory”) that provides a unique, flexible infrastructure for scientifically studying the power of pervasive computing for motivating learning and behavior change in the home.