Homesense Final Report

HOMESENSE
Georgina Voss & Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino

December 2011

With the kind support of

Contents

Introduction

Project Background

1. Objectives
1.1 Relevance of the project
1.2 Concept of the project
1.3 Research design
1.4 Users and innovation

2. Methods
2.1 Expertise and locality
2.2 Experts, relationships & proximity
2.3 Toolkit
2.4 Implementation
2.5 Data gathering

3. Findings
3.1 Making things
3.1.1 Areas of design
3.1.2 Energy concerns
3.2 The Home as a Lab
3.2.1. Physical limits of a house
3.2.2. Impact of geographic location
3.2.3. Starting small
3.2.4. House as a workplace
3.2.5. Houses and neighbors
3.2.6. Toolkit usage and extension
3.3 Challenges
3.3.1. Project failures
3.3.2. Self-reporting & stage fright
3.3.3. Reporting to Tinker
3.3.4. Household & expert relationships
3.3.5 Partnerships
3.4 Methodology
3.4.1. Open research
3.4.2. Selection process
3.4.3. Timings

Conclusion

References

Appendix 1: Press coverage & conferences
Appendix 2: Project assets
Appendix 3: Project team

2 designswarm.com/homesense

Introduction
The role of this report is twofold. Firstly, it will introduce Homesense as a project and report
on its process and findings. The second goal is to document a 2 year learning process and
propose steps for improvement should this experiment be undertaken again.

Sections 1 and 2 provide a short overview of the literature on user innovation and lived
experiences. This provides an important contextual background to the research methods
used and evaluated in later chapters.

Section 3 focuses on the implementation and evaluation of the open research methods used.
It describes in more detail the research methodology used, and the success and challenges
of various aspects of it including: the use of hardware toolkits, the relationships built between
households and ʻlead usersʼ, issues around self-reporting and open research, and other
facets of the research design. In ʻConclusionsʼ we summarise our findings.

The project would not have been possible without the generous support of EDF R&D and the
active enthusiasm of Charles Delalonde and Edouard Sierkieski. The leadership of Dr.
Georgina Voss made this project happen even in the strangest of situations and for that I am
eternally grateful.

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino
Principal of designswarm
(Former CEO of Tinker London)


Project Background
The Homesense project was an open research project around the topic of bottom-up smart
homes initiated by Tinker London. In mid-2009, founder Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino
wrote a blog post highlighting what the opportunities were for a large-scale open source
interrogation of the “smart home” concept. Often explored in closed R&D environments, it
was possible to think of the results being more relevant and accurate if the participants could
build their own solutions to their problems rather than operating under the assumption that
most people would accept top-down design. An existing relationship with EDF R&D via
Arduino workshops led to a sponsorship from EDF R&D for 50% of the projectʼs value (£58K
or so at the time). Partners in the project also included two PhD students from the HighWire
group at Lancaster University, Natasha Carolan and Richard Wood who helped design the
packaging for the tools available to users in this experiment. The project was eventually
wrapped in mid-2011 and technical tools featured at the New York Museum of Modern Artʼs
exhibition on smart objects: Talk to Me. The project was featured online, on radio and in print
throughout the project. Academic outputs are currently being developed from the project by
Georgina Voss.


1. Objectives
Homesenseʼs primary research objectives were:
- To examine what the user-led design and innovation practices which occur within a
domestic setting can tell us about energy behaviours.
- To explore the success and challenges of bringing the open collaborative methods of
online communities to physical infrastructures in the home.

The Homesense project examined how users and households can design their own ʻsmartʼ
interactive technologies based around their own specific lived experience, and the insights
that this gives into domestic energy behaviours. The project also explored the success of
ʻopenʼ research methods, and the use of toolkits and co-located ʻlead userʼ expertise in
enabling this design.

To answer the research objectives, a methodology was constructed encompassing three
main empirical approaches within an inductive research framework:
- Recruitment of 6 ʻhouseholdsʼ and 8 co-located ʻexpertsʼ across Europe.
- Provision of a “Homesense Kit” made up of open source hardware technologies.
- Support from a local ʻlead userʼ throughout the research process.
- Ethnographic observations and self-reporting from households using a project blog,
videos, and picture sharing online.

The main theoretical and empirical innovation of this project is the combination of the
theoretical perspectives on user innovation, tool-kits and lead user expertise with domestic
energy behaviors. An important aspect of the research is to consider how the physical
structure and location of the home environment shapes design activities and subsequent
energy behaviours. For example, access to a roof garden or space makes installing solar
panels easier than if someone lives in a ground floor apartment. Access to a garden might
make people think of design opportunities related to water usage that would never occur to
someone living in a high-rise apartment.

1.1 Relevance of the project

Over a third of UK carbon emissions come from usersʼ private travel and household energy
use (Ockwell et al 2010). Public awareness of climate change and carbon emissions is not
linked to personal behavior, yet people are more willing to change their energy behaviours
around the home than around travel (Coulter and Clegg 2007).

Part of what the Homesense project focused on was the design capabilities and energy
behaviours of end consumers. Much of the research around energy consumption focuses on
the home. The domestic context of the home is critical in shaping energy behaviours and
includes:

- Physical infrastructures (McKensie-Mohr 1994) and tenureship of dwelling (eg. Rented,
owned).
- Lifestyle choices and past behaviours (Kollmus and Agyeman 2004)
- Technical changes, such as changes in arrangements in home energy systems
(Druckman and Jackson 2008).
- Household income and levels of disposable income.


- Household composition, including the number and age of inhabitants and relationships
between them (eg, family members, housemates).
- Household energy use is related to different factors to energy savings. Energy use is
related to socio-demographic variables, whereas energy savings are related to
psychological factors. Contextual factors therefore shape opportunities for energy
consumption, whereas reductions in energy use requires conscious efforts to change
behavior (Abrahamse and Stegg 2009).
- Domestic technological interventions can shape consumer activity around energy use,
including the use of smart meters and the adoption of technologies such as solar power
systems (Faiers and Neame 2006).

This last point has particular relevance for the project. Whilst we are aware of how top-down
interventions shape user behavior, we know less about how consumers may wish to develop
their own technological interventions which are unique to their own home environment,
rather than engaging with pre-built systems. Yet all encompassing ʻsmart homeʼ
technologies fail because they use top-down approaches which treat the home as a closed
social and technical system. The user-led innovation research describes how users make,
modify and ʻhackʼ their own technologies according to their needs (von Hippel 2005). User
innovation has been seen in physical technologies such as medical equipment (Lettl et al
2006), and takes place in open collaborative innovation communities such as those
developing open source software (Lakhani and von Hippel 2003). However, recent research
indicates that the most common site for user-led innovation activities is the home (Flowers et
al 2010).

The Homesense research project therefore explored the connection between how users
design and live with technologies according to their own domestic lived experience, and the
insights that this gives us into their own energy behaviours and adaptations. The project also
explored the successes and challenges of implementing the open collaborative methods of
user-led design in a physical and personal domestic setting. In order for policymakers and
energy providers to reach and design for end users and consumers more effectively, we
need to know more about the shaping of technologies within a domestic space.

1.2 Concept of the project

The Homesense project was designed to investigate citizen-led design of reactive and
interactive technologies in domestic spaces by bringing the open collaboration methods to
physical infrastructures in the home. The project was developed in response to perceived
failings in the development of ʻsmartʼ domestic technologies to date which have been seen
to predominantly adopt top-down approaches, treating the home as a closed social and
technological system (Aldrich 2003). The aim was to explore how better scenarios could
develop if users were able to develop products according to their specific needs, social
contexts and lifestyles. To facilitate these user-led innovation practices, the research
methodology was developed around two key facets from the user innovation literature – the
role of ʻlead userʼ expertise and the use of toolkits in the innovation process. Members of
six households across Europe were provided with the tools and resources to build ʻsmartʻ
interactive technologies suited to their own domestic lived experience, through a physical
ʻtoolkitʼ and a co-located expert. Using these resources, they designed, prototyped, tested
and built their own domestic technological interventions based around their own lived
experience, over a 4-6 month ʻlive phaseʼ.


1.3 Research design

The empirical design of the project followed five stages:
- Developing an empirical and theoretical framework drawing on the literature on user-
led innovation and design.
- Recruiting six diverse households and co-located experts from across Europe.
- Designing and developing a kit of open source hardware tools.
- Training households with the kit and introducing them to their expert before a 4-6
month ʻlive phaseʼ in which households designed and developed their own
technological interventions. Material was collected through site visits, face to face and
phone interviews, photos, videos and blog entries.
- Data analysis, integrating theoretical frameworks with empirical material to provide
insights into user energy behaviors within a domestic context.

1.4 Users and innovation

Users of technologies are playing an increasingly important and active role in their design,
diffusion, and adoption. Designs fail to gain approval and acceptance when designers have
insufficient knowledge about people, their capacities, needs and desires (Redstrom 2006),
and the most successful innovating firms are those who have close relationships with the
users of their products and services (Rothwell et al 1974). A more active role for the design
and development of new technologies has been observed over the past three decades
across interdisciplinary research (eg Sanders and Sanders 2008, Ourdshoorn and Pinch
2005, von Hippel 2005). Whilst increased user involvement has been facilitated by digital
and online technologies there is a long-standing tradition of user engagement in design and
innovation activities which should not be considered to be recent or novel (Voss 2010).

In design studies, conceptions of collaboration between users and professional designers in
ʻdesign as an activityʼ are complex. Different theorists have used different names to
describe and classify these activities, include participatory design, co-design, collaborative
design, meta design, user-centred and user-led design. They vary according to the level of
user engagement, from user-as-subject to user-as-partner (Sanders and Sanders 2008).
ʻParticipatory designʼ processes facilitate the active involvement of the people being
designed for, and other stakeholders in the design process. Here, ʻusersʼ become active
participants in the design process, blurring the boundary between ʻdesignerʼ and ʻuserʼ
(Luck 2003) and questioning the role of ʻdesigner as expertʼ.

Whilst design literatures have focused on design as ʻpurposeful activityʼ with a goal to make
something to be used by someone else (Reich et al 1996) innovation studies have framed
the activities within an economic context, examining the role of firms, the nature of the
market, and the necessity of tacit and codified knowledge resources for innovation. The
work on user-led innovation describes how individuals, communities and firms develop
products and services for their own use (rather than commercial sale in the first instance)
based around knowledge of their own needs and experience, and of the means to provide
solutions to those needs (von Hippel 2005). In contrast to the design literatures the user
here is emphatically a partner, collaborator or even sole inventor/developer of their own
innovations. Users are seen to hold ʻstickyʼ information about their own needs and
preferences which is costly to transfer, making it possible for users to innovate at low costs
compared to manufacturers (von Hippel 1994). The level of user engagement varies
according to need, experience, capabilities and access, with involvement ranging from
feedback and support to the full creation of novel products (Flowers et al 2008). The level of
engagement is also be shaped by the scale and control of the project. In large-scale


community design of urban spaces, users are expected to take a less active role,
participating in the design process through public meetings and workshops (Toker 2007).
Large innovation projects around software are supported through online platforms (which
may be provided by firms) and libraries of content, and self-organised communities of
individual users (Jeppesen and Fredericksen 2006).

User-led innovation activities have predominantly been located within communities of
practice around professions, extra-curricular activities, and consumer products. Yet recent
research indicates that the most common site of user-led innovation is the home (von
Hippel et al 2010). However, these interventions do not appear to centre around the ʻsmartʼ
technologies of pervasive computing (eg. Microcontrollers) but instead around existing
artefacts (eg. Cars). Thom-Santinelli (2007) raises concerns that current approaches to
urban design and deployment focus on the same privileged groups that designers
themselves are a part of, potentially leading to digital and material divides between the
prosperous and the less prosperous. The user innovation and participatory design
approaches offer useful rubrics for examining how technological interventions can be
created by the people that will ultimately use them.


2. Methods
2.1 Expertise and locality

The location of user-led innovation and design activities is critical. When designing away
from the domestic space, designers of consumer technologies bring a reconstructed version
of the domestic world into the company. Work to date on the role ʻsmartʼ interactive
technologies into domestic environments has taken a top-down approach in which
technologies are introduced into home for participants to react against, rather than being
developed by the household occupants themselves (Mayra et al 2006). To overcome these
issues around artificial test environments, and separation between the spaces of design the
innovation process was designed to take place by participants within their own households
over an extended period of time. This allowed participants to design, test, prototype and use
technologies within the domestic spaces in which they lived (and sometimes worked). This is
particularly important in domestic design as users are likely to live in their houses for
extended time periods and engage with the artifacts within them over a longer time period
than in other settings such as hospitals or workplaces.

Table 1: Households accepted to second round of selection process

Location Background and reasons for wanting to join (selected
comments)
UK A victorian cottage with garden, 3 kids, some tech already installed
Berlin, Germany Head of design research conference

Paris, FR I am a very curious person and I love new technology. I work in
communication and I am really interested in how high technology
change the way we relate with our community (family, friends, social
community, etc.).
Bures sur Yvette, To be able to manage my energy consumption as well as possible.
FR To give sense to my daily objects in order to profit from an
experiment social with them and to facilitate the daily organization
with 5 person.
London Over the last few months I have been following online, several
amateur hackspaces.
Tennessee - USA Very interested in Smart spaces, I am a head librarian and I am
working to make my library as smart as possible.
Derbyshire, UK We would relish the opportunity to work with an expert to
sympathetically optimise the running of the house, from creating
something like a solar-powered automated chicken coup
management module to seasonal airflow management to rainwater
and greywater collection and monitoring systems.
Buckinghamshire, I have designed the network to all feed back to a central hub and
UK hopefully future proof the house for years to come. I am keen on
developing ways to monitor the house and follow #homecamp on
Twitter
Ormskirk, UK I would like to put forward my home for consideration. I have been
working with the Arduino as a novice since Christmas and of course
have all these wonderful ideas but little coding skill to really bring
them to fruition.


Domestic behaviours are shaped by household factors including composition (ie.
Housemates, partners, children); tenure (ie. Rented, ownership); stock (ie. Old, new-build,
apartment, house); and location (ie. Urban, suburban, rural, country) (Druckman and Jacksn
2008).To examine a range of innovation behaviours, participants were selected for diversity
of the above factors (see Tables 1, 2 and 3).

Table 2: Rejected households (existing technological expertise, conflict of
interest)
Location Background and reasons for wanting to join (selected comments)

Wiltshire, UK We are proposing to build a Smart Home / Village in Wiltshire.

Lint, BE The reason why me, my partner and our home would like to participate
is because we're quite enthusiastic about new technology but do not
have sufficient knowledge (or courage) to make things

London, UK We have a 60s Wates house in Dulwich and are passionate about
Smart/Digital Homes for both economic and ecological reasons

Southampton, I have been a professional engineer.
UK
Camberley,UK interested in home automation and monitoring

Paris, FR I'm not at all a technical guy and I'm very interested by this topic of
smart home and got the chance to think a little bit about it when I was
an intern in an Innovation department of a company working with
Sensors

Enschede, NL I think it would be great if we could make our flat a bit more hi-tech. Iʼve
always dreamed of hooking up the washing machine and dryer to the
internet, so it could remind you itʼs finished. Currently we have a pc with
touch screen, were we organize our diners and log beer consumption.

Paris, FR I'm an interaction & service designer working on cross media projects
for 13 years trying to stay focus on users needs and new type of
interactions. I deeply beleive than the boundery between home usages
and mobility usages is going to change because of devices capabilities
and users skills. Home is a wonderfull playground to innovate and be
really close to what users really needs.

London, UK Iʼm a geek married to a luddite. Iʼm passionate about technology and
the role it can have in making life easier, more fun and the positive
impact it can have on our world. My wife likes simple things that look
pretty.

To be able to successfully innovate, users must hold solution information and manufacture
information. Lead user theory describes how ʻlead usersʼ are more likely to possess relevant
solution information through search and integration of knowledge from different external
sources of relevance (Jeppesen and Laursen 2009). ʻLead usersʼ are therefore more
innovative than other users with regard to new ideas, new applications, and new prototype
solutions (Morrison et al 2000) and also obtain significant benefits from innovating. They are
likely to have higher leading-edge status, in-house technical ability, and can be distinguished


from non-innovating users (Morrison et al 2004). However, it is unclear how this technical
expertise shapes outcomes of the innovation process itself as technologists have biases in
their working strategies (Blackwell et al 2009).

Table 3: Final households that were selected

Region Household type Composition

London 1 Urban Apartment Couple (M, F), no children

London 2 Urban Apartment Couple (M, F), one child (M)

Paris Urban Apartment Single occupant (F)

Geneva Urban Apartment Couple (M, F), no children

Letterkenny Rural Semi-detached Two flatmates (M, M)
house

Manchester Suburban Semi-detached Couple (M, F), two children (M, F)
house

2.3 Experts, relationships and proximity
To limit these biases, households were deliberately selected with limited prior technological
experience around electronics; and each participating ʻhouseholdʼ was partnered with a local
ʻexpertʼ who had demonstrable prior technological expertise and initiative. This provided a
means of constructively combining the lived experience of the inhabitants of each specific
domestic space, with the technical expertise necessary to develop technological
interventions. Design is a social process in which certain factors and activities emerge
including roles and relationships; planning; information gathering; concept generating; and
conflict resolution (Cross and Cross 1995). Whilst it was both impossible and undesirable to
prescribe and control these activities between all participants, roles were clearly defined for
both households and experts which were described during the recruitment process, and re-
iterated during the training day. Households designed and built (to the best of their abilities)
their technology projects; experts used their expertise to provide guidance around the
feasibility of the projects and built and coded relevant parts of the projects which were
beyond the capabilities of the households. ʻExpertsʼ were thus deliberately named as such to
form their role in terms of the expert technical knowledge that they would bring to actively
shape and develop the projects, rather than simply as behind-the-scenes support – they
worked ʻhand-in-handʼ with the households to transfer technical and design know-how. In
this sense, experts also acted as stewards for the technology itself (Wenger et al 2009)


Table 4: Selected experts applications (selected comments)

Location Reasons for wanting to join
London, UK There are not many experiences that interest me more than
working with people. I have found in my work this requires co-
creation, collaborative methods and an ability to help a
community

Norway i would love to join your team! i don't really qualify, since i just
started with arduino a while ago.

The I would like to apply as an expert and as home for the homesense
Netherlands project.

In participatory design there needs to be a meaningful and productive relationship between
ʻthose charged with technology design, and those who must live with its consequencesʼ
(Kensing and Blomberg 1998). Effective communication is a key part of this process
(Gallivan and Keil 2003), not least in facilitating shared understanding of the projects. In the
recruitment process, ʻexpertsʼ were deliberately chosen to be physically proximate to their
households. This co-location was intended to facilitate the development of a productive and
communicative relationship between the household and the experts through the provision of
shared experience about the local urban environment, and also make it easier for both
parties to meet during the project

2.4 Toolkit
ʻToolkitsʼ are co-ordinated sets of user-friendly design tools that enable customers to
develop new product innovations around their own specific needs (von Hippel and Katz
2002); and have been well-studied as a means to facilitate heterogeneity in user innovation
around product design, and transfer design capabilities to users. Moussette (2010) reviews a
number of existing ʻtangible interaction toolkitsʼ which aim to democratize and simplify
prototyping activities by providing simplified access and control to low-level hardware and
programming and embedded electronics.


Figure 1. ʻResearchKitʼ toolkit and open source hardware

To facilitate their activities each household was provided with a ʻResearchKitʼ (Figure 1) – an
electronics hardware toolkit consisting of components predominantly compatible with the
ʻArduinoʼ platform and a user guide. The toolkit was intended to make physical interaction
and control easily appropriable. The user guide contained details about each of the
components in the kit, and examples of interactive devices that could be built using them,
such as The Ambient Orb and the BakerTweet.

The ResearchKit was built around the Arduino microcontroller to facilitate ease of use in non-
technical households. The Arduino was developed to specifically cater to a non-technical
audience by focusing on usability, thereby allowing users to ʻspend less time figuring out the
inner workings and more time experimenting and discovering how it can be used in different
environments and scenariosʼ (Gibb 2010). Digital toolkits which constrain the design space
are expanded by their users (Prugl and Schreier 2006) and it was anticipated that the open
hardware nature of the ResearchKit would enable any further expansion by its users.

Beyond usability, ʻArduinoʼ technologies were also deliberately selected due to their open
source nature. User involvement in open source software projects has been well
documented (Franke and von Hippel 2003). By using open source technologies, it was
intended that households and ʻexpertsʼ would not be as constrained in their design activities
as they would be if using proprietary hardware, but instead would be able to conduct
unrestricted prototyping and experimentation. The Arduino community also provides
accessible technology repositories (eg code, schematics) and online social forums for
support and discussion of projects providing a further repository of support for households to
tap into.


In addition to basic provision of technological components, the ResearchKit was also
designed to act as a ʻcultural probeʼ - a design-led approach to understanding users that
stresses empathy and engagement (Gaver et al 1999). This approach was adopted as it
allowed households to participate in designing for the domestic space rather than simply
occupying a role of user as subject (Carolan and Cruickshank 2011). As a probe, the kit was
designed to concomitantly elicit design inspiration for new domestic technologies and to
make explicit ʻsticky informationʼ to inform further ʻexpertʼ development and interaction in the
participatory design process.

2.5 Implementation

Households and experts were self-selecting, recruited through press releases, word of
mouth and social networking sites (mainly Tinkerʼs blog, Arduinoʼs forums and Twitter).
Households were selected first; experts were then selected based on proven technological
expertise via an online portfolio of work, and proximity to a suitable household.

Each household engaged in a one-day training exercise in their homes prior to the start of
the live phase of the project. This training day had multiple purposes. Firstly, the households
were trained in the use of the Arduino-based technologies in the ResearchKit. Education
provision allows users to engage more fully in participatory design projects, understanding
the issues involved and bridging the gap between their own language and the technical
jargon (Reich et al 1996). Following the technical training, each household was taken
through ideation exercises to help them explore how they inhabited their homes, with
questions focusing on what users liked most and least about living in their homes, and how
they interacted with the outside world when at home. This led into the development of
scenarios about potential projects which households could build; scenarios can be useful in
user-centred design as means of presenting and situating solutions, illustrating alternative
solutions and identifying potential problems.

In the final part of the training, households were introduced to their local ʻexpertsʼ. The
project leaders facilitated a discussion about the earlier ideation exercise, and the
households and experts co-developed three potential project ideas which they could build
over the live phase of the project. The day finished with each household and expert
arranging when they would next meet to begin to develop projects.

2.6 Data gathering
A multi-method ethnographic approach was used in data gathering. Information was
collected from each household in an ongoing manner over the course of the live phase
through multiple means. Regular interviews were conducted with households and experts
over the course of the live phase. Where possible, these interviews were conducted as site
visits to directly observe the projects in situ; and video interviews were also conducted via
Skype to provide similar visual and audio information.

Households also self-reported their activities through photos, videos and short written
reports, some of which were used as blog posts on the project website. Each household was
also provided with a small video recorder and encouraged to make short films about their
projects. In user-led design projects, effective participation requires continuous commitment
and engagement (Reich et al 1996). In order to facilitate the development of high-salience
household technologies, the live phase for each household ran from 4-6 months. This was to
allow sufficient time for users to meet with their experts; plan, design and develop several
projects; and live with the technologies that they had made.


3. Findings
3.1 Making things

3.1.1.Areas of design

Projects that were designed by household in the project included:

(L) Pumpkin with different sounds & lights in its eyes depending whether a child had been
naughty or nice for Halloween. (completed)
(R) Ways to turn the kettle on when they wake up in the morning. (not-completed)

(L) ʻMarvin the Paranoid Androidʼ: a toy placed above the toilet with an embedded IR sensor.
It senses if someone has been to the toilet and reminds them to put the lid down with a stern
message. (completed)
(R) A map which draws on data from the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme to indicate where the
nearest free bike post was. (completed)


- A way to remotely link the radio to the light switch. (not
completed)

(L) Light controller depending on the amount of daylight. (completed)
(C) Sound visualization device. (not completed)
(R) Mechanical plant-watering system (completed)

(L) A coaster that reminds you to go have a tea break away from a screen once an hour.
(completed)
(R) A bin with a face that gets angry when you use it too much (which implies youʼre not
recycling enough) (completed)

10 projects were completed over an average period of 5 months of interaction, which
included a slumber period of Christmas time.

3.1.2 Energy behaviours
“She seems particularly interested in the energy cycles of her living space. For
instance, she expressed interest in visualizing the thermic exchanges in her living room,
which lacks good thermic isolation because of its single-pane windows.”

“They hope to learn the skills and get the kit that are needed to make their flat a smart one,
solve a few problems in their everyday lives, and save some energy along the way.”


“When I enter a room, I switch on the light and the radio switches on automatically and since
I am very eco-friendly I switch off the light when I leave the room and so my radio switches
off

A lot of householdsʼ initial drive for experimentation was vocalized and driven by a theme
around energy usage and measurement. Energy is often associated with “efficiency” in mind.
However, the playful nature of the kit, and the difficulties encountered by some of the experts
during the design process meant that “energy” was visualized very different ways.

These designs inform us about conscious and unconscious energy behaviours. Several
projects were primarily designed around daily cycles (when users come home, when users
wake up, when users work), where energy use was a secondary consideration. This is
illustrated by the design of motion activated and timer-based projects. These indicate that
users have embedded energy-related behaviours, desires and needs which are so well-
trodden that they cannot necessarily be articulated; however, users are able to design
around them.

Solutions to energy and environmental issues can depend on meaning imbued in objects
(eg. Letterkennyʼs angry bin in playful precisely because it is used by a household of young
male flatmates). The anthropomorphisation of objects is relevant to the user in the same way
that ʻMarvinʼ is a relevant interface for a household with a child. The behaviours around
these personal solutions are a powerful ways to interact with conceptualisations around
ʻenergyʼ.

Four households were also provided with EDF energy monitors to play with in the final
weeks of the project. There is also a cognitive difference between being provided with a fully
functional object (eg an energy monitor), and with being provided with a set of tools. The
open-ness of the exercise suffered at the hand of finalised product design. It might be
desirable to consider packaging the energy monitor in a way that makes it fit with another
toolkit, in terms of interactions and learning processes. For example, a documentation
process of integration between energy monitors and the ʻArduinoʼ platform might be useful.
Integrating energy monitors early on in the project would have allowed these initial energy-
related desires to be addressed directly; however, as the monitors were introduced after the
initial planning phase, this proved an unsuccessful exercise.

3.2 The Home as a Lab

3.2.1. Local resources
Several households extended their access to expertise, tools and materials beyond the
boundaries of their house and the relationship with experts. Three households made use of
local fabrication laboratory to extend the space for implementation and design solutions. One
households was also able to get 3D pieces prototypes at their workplace, extending the
reach of tools available to them. One household developed relations with two further experts
– a developer and a designer – to assist with the final stages of the BikeMap project.

3.2.2 Geographic location
As described earlier, the geographical proximity requirement meant that many suitable
households applied but were not able to be partnered with a corresponding expert.

3.2.3 Starting small
Many of the collaborations started with smaller experiments, partly to ʻease inʼ to the use of
unfamiliar technologies but also to test the working relationship between the household and


the experts. It can be argued that the effectiveness of these initial projects shaped the
success (or otherwise) of the remainder of the live phase. For two households, the small
early experiments did not lead to more robust projects to be built and tested.

3.2.4 Home as a workplace
The divisions, overlaps and delineations between ʻhomeʼ and ʻworkʼ are not clear when
digital technologies are present. The ʻflashing coasterʼ project was specifically developed to
address issues around the designer working from his home computer for much of his work.
This blurring of ʻworkʼ and ʻplayʼ challenges the expected type of devices found in the home
– the problem would not exist if this designer didnʼt work from home but was forced to
socialize in an outside workplace. Does the home in itself create artificial problems which
households were trying to solve?

3.2.5 Houses and neighbours
Homes are often defined in relation to neighbours and neighbourhoods. The ʻsound detectorʼ
project was built around concerns about the household activities being too loud for
neighbours in the surrounding apartment complex. One household explained how they were
also limited in their designs as they also lived in a shared apartment block and were unable
to safely trail wires down the shared stairwell. This presents interesting opportunities in
terms of infrastructure and defining where design can happen, and where a common
communal platform is needed.

3.2.6 Toolkit usage and extension
Most of the households use a core subset of the components given in the ResearchKit. Most
popular add-ons to the Arduino included buttons, LEDs, toggle switches, the Servo motor,
and light sensors. The least favoured component was the bend sensor, which people were
afraid would break. With the basic kit, and with experts to help, all of the households were
quick to expand on the functionalities offered either with new materials, or by buying new
components. One household spent several hundred Euro buying new components from
online vendors including Sparkfun. Another also bought additional components for their
projects, including a picture frame from Muji for the BikeMap. Even though some elements
remained untouched, we argue that a more basic and pared-down toolkit would have been
insufficient to inspire people to find out what was easy to use and expand on, and what
wasnʼt.

3.3 Challenges

3.3.1. Project failures
Several projects were abandoned before completion. One household had planned to make a
device that would measure the amount of milk left in the fridge (by analysing the light levels)
and then send a message to their phones telling them to buy more milk. However, the
complexity of the process seemed too overwhelming and, in the process of design, they
decided that it would be easier to simply remember to buy milk rather than having to create a
specific gadget to do so. Other projects failed because of limitations in time and knowledge,
such as the ʻnoise detectorʼ project. The whole process was however documented heavily by
the household and experts, showing that process was, for that household, as important as
users.

3.3.2 Self-reporting and stage-fright
The ʻopen researchʼ nature of the research meant that some households experienced ʻstage
frightʼ and, contrary to their initial expectations for the project, found that they felt
uncomfortable and shy about discussing their work in a public forum. Several households


admitted in the private interviews that they did not feel that their work was impressive
enough to showcase, despite constant encouragement and emphasis that the design
process was just as important as the final project outcomes.

3.3.3 Reporting to Tinker London
A lack of engagement in some of the households was due in part to the closure of Tinker
London approximately halfway through the live phase. Related to issues of self-reporting,
some households would promise outcomes (eg blog posts, etc) but would not deliver them.
Distance did not seem to play a part: whilst it was easier to conduct interviews in person with
members of the London households due to proximity, ongoing phone and Skype interviews
were successfully conducted with other households which were based further away.
Successful engagement depended very much on how much households wanted to engage
after the initial excitement of the project had worn off and the activities of the live phase had
to be accommodated around their everyday lives.

3.3.4 Household and expert relationships
Two of the household/expert relationships broke down over the course of the live phase. In
one instance the expert admitted that he had underestimated the work and time that would
be necessary, and did not feel that he had the time or skills. In the second case, the expert
simply stopped communicating with both the household and the Tinker team, so left the
project.

3.3.5 Partnerships
The initial project plan included the participation of a community manager and a data
partnership as we knew our small team would not be able to handle the volume of data
created. GreenMonk was initially approached but that relationship failed to materialise and
lack of time to engage beyond the core team meant that training, designing and running the
project was executed by 3-5 people all throughout the project. A slightly larger team would
have helped in supporting more directly the relationships between households and experts
and core team to address issues quickly.

3.4 Methodology

3.4.1. Open research
Open research was not always an easy concept to communicate. For this project, we meant
it to mean that Creative Commons applies to both the project process and outcomes with the
intention of benefiting all parties. There were several motivations for this approach:

• It made sense in a connected world.
As advocates of open source hardware and software, we liked open dialogues and
wanted to apply the same principles to shape a conversation around what we were
doing. Digital social networking tools (eg. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc) were used to
follow the lead set around a similar time by IDEOʼs ʻOpen IDEOʼ project.

• Building smart relationships
Our partnership with EDF R&D was very important to us as we wanted to be able to
transfer knowledge about design processes and implementation between a large
organization with extensive experience of research and development around energy
behaviours, and ourselves. Edouard Siekierski and Charles Delalonde really
understood where the project needed to go, and were happy to let us lead the design
and implementation conversation.


• Social IP
As a small team, patents were too costly for our resources. Opening the project
enabled us to share the design and methodology processes, whilst placing our name
on it. This was a form of IP we were able to invest in, and we were pleased to find a
partner like EDF R&D to support us in this.

• To allow us to learn
A public project had significant risks associated with it – in particular the ʻcease and
desistʼ engagement about use and ownership of the ʻHomesenseʼ brand with TK
Maxx (now resolved) was a particular challenge. However, the widespread publicity
which the project and its results received in industry, academic and community
circles, as well as the projectsʼ presence at the Museum of Modern Art speaks
volumes in favour of such an approach when the overall budget is low (less than
£50k) and public returns are high.

3.4.2. Selection process
Although the selection of households proved very fruitful, the selection of experts proved
more problematic. We had assumed that as Tinker was engaged with communities around
open source hardware and hardware hacking, finding a variety of suitable experts would not
be difficult. This was far from the case. There may have been a perception that because of
the involvement of EDF R&D, the project would be too corporate in scope and would exploit
peopleʼs expertise. Potential applicants may also have felt that the role of ʻexpertʼ was too
close to their working lives and that they would have preferred to be involved as ʻhouseholdsʼ
(and indeed many ʻhouseholdʼ applicants were rejected because they already had extensive
technical capabilities). It is notable that several of the selected experts already had previous
teaching experience, in addition to their technological expertise – this might indicate a trait
that would be useful in future research. Finally, it is also worth noting that lack of
commitment to the project as the live phase progressed predominantly seemed to arise from
the experts rather than the households, supporting our initial assumptions about the design
capabilities and personal investment of user communities.

3.4.3. Timings
Our initial assumptions about the timing of the project were challenged over the live phase.
Whilst the closing of Tinker London caused delays, every household also asked for extra
time to continue the design process. The initial estimated time for the live phase for each
household was 3 months, starting in September 2010. However, the average length of the
live phase for households was 5 months.


Conclusion
The Homesense research project has provided us with a series of steep and challenging
learning curves. From the summit though there are several lessons to that we can take away
for future work.

Open research is possible, but needs to be balanced with the privacy concerns of the
participants. Sharing code and schematics is fine, but sharing personal details is much more
delicate. Research which focuses on both the lived experience of participants and the
technological interventions that they create must carefully balance how much is shared with
the wider world.

Life in the home is understandably far more messy and complex than a stay in a test lab.
What researchers gain from the richness of a ʻrealʼ domestic environment is traded against
the chaos that is present in such spaces. We argue that such challenges are more than
compensated for by the complex data that comes from the home, but that future projects
should definitely plan around these issues and be flexible in the amount of time offered to
participants.

Hardware toolkits and physical user-led design provides a plethora of insights into domestic
behaviours and potential energy patterns. Without prescriptive design briefs, users are able
to design the interventions imbued by the meanings of their own lived experience and
domestic environment rather than be constrained by imposed meanings of ʻenergyʼ and
ʻhomeʼ. These insights come from both the products that users create, but also the
processes by which the design process happens - even ʻfailureʼ gives insights in this type of
work.


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Appendix 1: Press coverage & conferences
Radio
BBC Four Thought radio program, September 2011
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2011/four-thought-september

Online
http://www.internetactu.net/2011/07/21/homesense-naissance-et-vissicitudes-dun-projet-ouvert/
http://moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/talktome/objects/145465/
http://www.interactivearchitecture.org/homesense.html
http://www.csquad.org/2010/11/07/lancement-du-projet-homesense-a-paris/
http://blog.hansdezwart.info/2011/07/08/open-what-happens-when-barriers-to-innovation-become-
drastically-lower/
http://www.experientia.com/blog/homesense-project-launched/
http://mungbean.org/blog/?p=817
http://thefinancialbrand.com/18906/uncommon-objects/

Conferences
2010
She Says SCAMP, UK
http://shesaysus.com/events/scamp-conference-london/

London Minibar, UK
http://www.meetup.com/minibar/events/12921330/

La Cantine, Paris
http://www.slideshare.net/TinkerLondon/la-cantine-homesense

Open Hardware Summit 2010, NYC
http://www.openhardwaresummit.org/schedule/

Carbon and Energy Hack Weekend, UK
http://rewiredstate.org/events/carbon-and-energy

HomeCamp 3, UK
http://hcul1.eventbrite.com/

2011
Cognitive Cities, Berlin
http://conference.cognitivecities.com/

LIFT France 11, Marseille
http://liftconference.com/lift-france-11/program

Understanding the Connected Home, London
http://blog.westminster.ac.uk/careers/2011/06/01/understanding-the-connected-home-consumer-
enterprise-event-16-june/

Greenbelt, Cheltenham
http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/

Academic
Goldsmiths Design Seminar, UK
http://www.gold.ac.uk/design/


UCL Science and Technology Studies Seminar, UK
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/sts-publication-events/07_02_seminar

Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference, UK
http://conference.rgs.org/conference/sessions/View.aspx?heading=Y&session=874f31b1-625f-4a28-
9448-f5559a81ebfa


Appendix 2: Project assets
Project website
www.homesenseproject.com
from 2012: designswarm.com/homesense

Photos

General
http://www.flickr.com/photos/54581926@N04/

London 1

London 2
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=75429951@N00&q=homesense

Geneva

Paris

Letterkenny

Manchester

ResearchKit components

Qty Item
LOGIC & POWER
1 Arduino board
1 USB cable

1 Power supply
1 Sensor shield
1 Keyboard emulator
10 Cable 20cm
10 Cable 50cm
10 Cable 100cm
2 Magnet

DIGITAL INPUTS
2 Pushbutton
2 Capacitive Touch Sensor
1 Switch
1 Tilt switch

ANALOG INPUTS


1 Rotary Potentiometer
1 Linear Potentiometer
2 LDR
1 Hall sensor
1 Thermistor
1 3-axis accelerometer
1 Buzzer
1 Bend sensor

OUTPUTS
4 LED red
4 LED green
4 LED yellow
1 Text LCD
2 Servo motor


Appendix 3: Project team

Georgina Voss, Research Manager
Georgina is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton, and an Honorary
Research Associate at the Science and Technology Studies Department, University College London.
She managed the Homesense project from an organisational and academic point of view with Tinker
London.
g.s.voss@brighton.ac.uk

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Initiator
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is a product designer, interaction designer & entrepreneur. She
initiated Homesense while CEO of Tinker London and now maintains it from Designswarm Industries
Ltd.
alex@designswarm.com

Edouard Siekierski, Project partner & researcher
Edouard is an “internal innovation catalyst” in the open innovation team at EDF.
edouard.siekierski@edf.fr

Charles Delalonde, Project partner & researcher
Charles works with EDF R&D, where his research focuses on how a deeper understanding of social
networks improves information retrieval activities.
delalonde@gmail.com

Damaris Rodriguez, Web Design & Community Managment
Damaris is an interaction designer and was involved in the design and creative production of the
originial online content as well as layout of the Homesense manual.
damaris.rfr@gmail.com

Daniel Soltis, Training & Homesense kit design
Daniel is an interaction Designer. He focuses on concept development, hardware and software
prototyping. He was involved in training all the households & experts as well as designing the
Homesense kit.
danielrsoltis@gmail.com

Natasha Carolan, Homesense kit design & user-centered research
Natasha is a PhD researcher and designer at HighWire Digital Economies Doctoral Training Centre at
Lancaster University.
natashacarolan@me.com

Richard Wood, Homesense kit design & user-centered research
Richard has been exploring my interests in mass creativity, democratised design, social networking,
physicality and play.
rt.wood@me.com


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