Smart home technologies promise to transform domestic comfort, convenience, security and leisure while also reducing energy use. But delivering on these potentially conflicting promises depends on how they are adopted and used in homes.

This book starts by developing a new analytical framework for understanding smart homes and their users. Drawing on a range of new empirical research combining both qualitative and quantitative data, the book then explores how smart home technologies are perceived by potential users, how they can be used to link domestic energy use to common daily activities, how they may (or may not) be integrated into everyday life by actual users, and how they serve to change the nature of control within households and the home. The book concludes by synthesising a range of evidence-based insights, and posing a series of challenges for industry, policy, and research that need addressing if a smart home future is to be realised. Researchers will find this book provides useful insights into this fast-growing field

Explores systematically - for the first time - the users and use of smart home technologies as a critical complement to technology-led design and development
Synthesis across both conceptual framing and methodological approaches to develop a novel analytical framework for understanding smart home technologies
Analyses a wide range of novel empirical data from a range of methods including large-scale social surveys, in-depth longitudinal interviews, and appliance-level electricity data
Generates evidence-based recommendations for future design, development, research, and policy on smart home technologies