Understanding Existing Smart Environments: A brief classification

In recent years, smart environments have emerged as a key target area for ubiquitous and pervasive computing research. As technologists contemplate moving the focus of their research from proprietary laboratories into ‘real living spaces’, such as the domestic environment, it becomes important to gain an understanding of existing work and experiences in this area. As part of our work within the ‘Domus’ strand of the Equator IRC, we have conducted an extensive survey of existing smart environment computing research; we have discovered a rich and diverse set of work drawn from many disciplines. In this paper we present an initial design space for domestic focused technologies and highlight areas that we believe require further work. In addition, we highlight a number of design opportunities drawn from the existing work in this area.