End-User-Development for Smart Homes: Relevance and Challenges

Activity based End-User-Development for Smart Homes: Relevance and Challenges

Ubiquitous computing is now mature enough to unleash the potential of Smart Homes. The obstacle is no more about hardware concerns but lies in how inhabitants can build, configure and control their Smart Home. In this paper, we defend the idea that End-User-Development (EUD), which considers inhabitants as makers rather than mere consumers, is an effective approach for tackling this obstacle. H...

Learning about End-User Development for Smart Homes by "Eating Our Own Dog Food"

SPOK is an End-User Development Environment that permits people to monitor, control, and configure smart home services and devices. SPOK has been deployed for more than 4 months in the homes of 5 project team members for testing and refinement, prior to longitudinal experiments in the homes of families not involved in the project. This article reports on the lessons learned in this initial depl...

Towards End-User Development of Smart Homes by means of Variability Engineering

Sensor Network-Based and User-Friendly User Location Discovery for Future Smart Homes

User location is crucial context information for future smart homes where many location based services will be proposed. This location necessarily means that User Location Discovery (ULD) will play an important role in future smart homes. Concerns about privacy and the need to carry a mobile or a tag device within a smart home currently make conventional ULD systems uncomfortable for users. Fut...

Supporting Tasks in a Programmable Smart Home

One of the most promising domains of pervasive computing is in the area of healthcare. There has been a lot of interest in seeing how smart homes can foster independent living and an enhanced life style for elderly and disabled people, and how active, information-rich hospitals can support both patients and the medical staff in their daily activities. However, one of the key challenges in the a...