Supporting end users to control their smart home: design implications from a literature review and an empirical investigation

Designing tools that allow end users to easily control and manage a smart home is a critical issue that researchers in Ambient Intelligence and Internet of Things have to address. Because of the variety of available solutions, with their advantages and limitations, it is not straightforward to understand which are the requirements that must be satisfied to effectively support end users. This paper aims to contribute to this topic through a systematic and rigorous activity based on two main pillars of the empirical research in software engineering: i) a literature review addressing design and evaluation of tools for smart home control oriented to end users, and ii) an experimental study in which three tools, that emerged from the literature review as the most suitable and widespread, were compared in order to identify the interaction mechanisms that end users appreciate most. On the basis of the obtained results, a set of design implications that may drive the development of future tools for smart home control and management are presented.