Smart-home devices have become integral to daily routines, but their onboarding procedures - setting up a newly acquired smart device into operational mode - remain understudied. The heterogeneity of smart-home devices and their onboarding procedure can easily overwhelm users when they scale up their smart-home system. While Matter, the new IoT standard, aims to unify the smart-home ecosystem, it is still evolving, resulting in mixed compliance among devices. In this paper, we study the complexity of device onboarding from users' perspectives. We thus performed cognitive walkthroughs on 12 commercially available smart-home devices, documenting the commonality and distinctions of the onboarding process across these devices. We found that onboarding smart home devices can often be tedious and confusing. Users must devote significant time to creating an account, searching for the target device, and providing Wi-Fi credentials for each device they install. Matter-compatible devices are supposedly easier to manage, as they can be registered through one single hub independent of the vendor. Unfortunately, we found such a statement is not always true. Some devices still need their own companion apps and accounts to fully function. Based on our observations, we give recommendations about how to support a more user-friendly onboarding process.
more »
« less
When Smart Devices Are Stupid: Negative Experiences Using Home Smart Devices
Household smart devices – internet-connected thermostats, lights, door locks, and more – have increased greatly in popularity. These devices provide convenience, yet can introduce issues related to safety, security, and usability. To better understand device owners’ recent negative experiences with widely deployed smart devices and how those experiences impact the ability to provide a safe environment for users, we conducted an online, survey-based study of 72 participants who have smart devices in their own home. Participants reported struggling to diagnose and recover from power outages and network failures, misattributing some events to hacking. For devices featuring built-in learning, participants reported difficulty avoiding false alarms, communicating complex schedules, and resolving conflicting preferences. Finally, while many smart devices support end-user programming, participants reported fears of breaking the system by writing their own programs. To address these negative experiences, we propose a research agenda for improving the transparency of smart devices.
more »
« less
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10095907
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the SafeThings Workshop
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract As devices with always-on microphones located in people’s homes, smart speakers have significant privacy implications. We surveyed smart speaker owners about their beliefs, attitudes, and concerns about the recordings that are made and shared by their devices. To ground participants’ responses in concrete interactions, rather than collecting their opinions abstractly, we framed our survey around randomly selected recordings of saved interactions with their devices. We surveyed 116 owners of Amazon and Google smart speakers and found that almost half did not know that their recordings were being permanently stored and that they could review them; only a quarter reported reviewing interactions, and very few had ever deleted any. While participants did not consider their own recordings especially sensitive, they were more protective of others’ recordings (such as children and guests) and were strongly opposed to use of their data by third parties or for advertising. They also considered permanent retention, the status quo, unsatisfactory. Based on our findings, we make recommendations for more agreeable data retention policies and future privacy controls.more » « less
-
Exploration of Internet of Things (IoT) security often focuses on threats posed by external and technically-skilled attackers. While it is important to understand these most extreme cases, it is equally important to understand the most likely risks of harm posed by smart device ownership. In this paper, we explore how smart devices are misused – used without permission in a manner that causes harm – by device owners’ everyday associates such as friends, family, and romantic partners. In a preliminary characterization survey (n = 100), we broadly capture the kinds of unauthorized use and misuse incidents participants have experienced or engaged in. Then, in a prevalence survey (n = 483), we assess the prevalence of these incidents in a demographically-representative population. Our findings show that unauthorized use of smart devices is widespread (experienced by 43% of participants), and that misuse is also common (experienced by at least 19% of participants). However, highly individual factors determine whether these unauthorized use events constitute misuse. Through a focus on everyday abuses rather than severe-but-unlikely attacks, this work sheds light on the most prevalent security and privacy threats faced by smart homeowners today.more » « less
-
How are people using current smart home technologies, and how do they conceptualize future ones that are more interconnected and more capable than those available today? We deployed an online survey study to 150 participants to investigate use of and opinions about smart speakers, home robots, virtual assistants, and other smart home devices.We also gauged how impressions of connected smart home devices are shaped by the way the devices interact with one another. Through a mixed-methods qualitative and quantitative approach, we found that people mostly use single devices for single functions, and have simple and brief interactions with virtual assistants. However, they imagine their future devices to have more control over the physical environment (i.e., interact with each other) and envision them interacting with people in more socially complex ways. These findings motivate design considerations and research directions for connected smart home technologies.more » « less
-
We developed “MiSu” an Android and iOS app that allows smart home homeowners to share their devices (e.g., Ring doorbell, security alarm, smart door lock, smart light bulb) with people outside of their home to control what, when, and how they can engage with the smart devices. MiSu provides options for fine-grain access control, the ability for guests to control smart homes using their own device and login, and provides homeowners real-time logs where they can view all actions taken by guests invited to interact with their smart homes.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
