Domesticating home networks

This thesis addresses the following question: How should domestic networks be reinvented to support self-management by domestic users? It takes a user-centred design approach to redesign the underlying domestic network infrastructure to better fit domestic users. The overall aim of this work is to create user-centred mechanisms to support self-management of domestic networks by domestic users. Two areas of the domestic network are studied in detail, user-centred mechanisms for domestic network infrastructure control and user-centred presentations of network data. User-centred mechanisms for domestic network infrastructure control are explored to improve Wi-Fi device association in domestic environments. A user-centred design approach is adopted to create a new method for sharing Wi-Fi credentials between devices, specifically tailored for domestic environments called MultiNet. The network performance impact of MultiNet is quantified using the standard metrics of throughput, latency, and jitter in a lab based experiment. MultiNet’s usability is then compared to Wi-Fi Protected Setup in a lab based usability evaluation. These show that better Wi-Fi device association methods targeted for domestic environments can be built. It also shows that user-centred networking infrastructure can support self-management by domestic users. User-centred presentations of network data address the poor legibility of domestic networks hinders configuration and maintenance of them. A user-centred approach is adopted to design and construct a network data visualisation and annotation platform, HomeNetViewer. Through a series of deployments in real households the