The Internet of Homes

Today’s “smart homes” aren’t. AI is in its infancy, though Internet of Things [IoT] and natural language processing are rapidly raising expectations about engaging with digital services at home. People are increasingly outsourcing aspects of their homes to effectively manage themselves semi-autonomously: from thermostats to media content.

To be accepted in the home, homebots and voice user interfaces will need to create trust through human-like relationships. The term AE or “Artificial Emotion” signals emerging forms of human-machine interactions that deliver on functional and emotional needs.

McKinsey conducted mobile diaries with 50 consumers in the US and Japan, and in-depth home visits with 12 consumers in order to explore existing technology, like Roombas and Alexas, and potential opportunities.

Home robots will be enable companies to listen and adapt to consumers using real time data and observation. This talk seeks to provoke designers to prepare for a post-mobile world of digital services at home, by focusing on artificial emotion and trust.

For more than 80 years we have been trying to predict our future lives in technology-enabled ‘smart homes’. This short, engaging presentation looks back on how these future visions from the sixties, nineties and the twenty-tens have influenced and shaped the narrative of what our connected products are supposed to be today and propose an alternative to our current understanding of the smart home. Through a series of fun video speculations (from the Bots project mentioned above), we will explore one potential future where technology moves beyond chores and time saving tasks. The aim is to inspire new ideas for richer, slightly edgier smart homes that just might be more ‘fun’ to actually live in.