Awake

Do you trust a machine to control your morning coffee?
Imagine the future where machines take care of your mental load and automate simple tasks, like making your morning coffee. Sounds neat, doesn't it? But are we truly ready to let go of our sense of control and let the machine take care of our simplest routines? 

In this project, I was exploring just that: 

"How the different user interaction modalities with IoT devices at home influence the sense of control for users?"

"How the sense of control over IoT devices would influence how people trust them?"

Problem

Sense of cotrol is rarely considered when creating automated IoT devices for home use. 

Process

4 different types of interactions with various control freedom were tested for 20 days in a form of a prototype of the alarm clock, created and deployed at one participant’s home. 

To gather more feedback, an online questionnaire along with online group sessions were held. Online group sessions used various methods, lasted for ca 1 hour and were held in 3 languages: English, Estonian and Russian.

Solution

Two lists of guidelines, consisting of points to consider while designing for such systems from a control and trust perspective.
Prototype creation.
This project also proved correlation between the sense of control and trust: “if the device does what I "command" it to do, it creates trust that I can be more sure it also does something in the future that I want it to do.”
Scenario testing during online sessions: General types of interaction, Stressful Monday Morning,  Usual Wednesday, Lazy Saturday.

Guidelines

General Guidelines

1. Universal use 
2. Regular updates of the system 
3. The number of people using it
4. Flexibility 
5. Information regarding data gathering 
6. Multifunctionality 
7. Power 
8. Distinct difference in buttons’ appearance 
9. Motivation
10. Additional factor recognition
11. Synchronization
12. Simpler and more intuitive interactions
13. Relevant functions
14. Less maintenance
15. Compatibility and interoperability
16. Possibility to integrate phone
17. Work with the user 

Guidelines to accont for sense of cotrol and trust

1. Customizable
2. Backup functions
3. Restart and Off
4. Cancellation function
5. Feedback
6. Early feedback or notification
7. Reminders
8. Predictability
9. Switching systems
10. Interoperability
Want to explore the whole project? 
Read thesis here
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