Our Work Is Never Done: Avoiding User Harm
We must seek richer and more diverse user input throughout the design process
Smart homes present a beautiful picture of convenience and comfort. The coffee machine turns on as your morning alarm goes off. The lights switch on as you walk down the hallway and direct your favorite voice assistant to play your morning podcast. Cameras and sensors help control the room temperature and your home security system. It’s basically the Jetsons’ house minus the sci-fi frills.
It is also the best-case scenario.
Apart from the myriad cybersecurity concerns that connected devices present, there are still unintended effects of the tech working as advertised. In 2018, the New York Times reported on domestic abuse victims who were terrorized by the houses they lived in:
Abusers — using apps on their smartphones, which are connected to the internet-enabled devices — would remotely control everyday objects in the home, sometimes to watch and listen, other times to scare or show power … For victims and emergency responders, the experiences were often aggravated by a lack of knowledge about how smart technology works, how much power the other person had over the devices, how to legally deal with the behavior and how to make it stop.
