A Design Philosophy for Agents in the Smart Home

TL;DR

This paper proposes a design philosophy for smart home agents emphasizing privacy, aiming to address emergent issues with current devices by guiding the development of more respectful and privacy-empowering technologies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel design philosophy for smart home agents focused on privacy, providing a framework for developing more respectful and user-centric devices.

Findings

Identifies privacy issues in current smart home devices

Proposes a new design philosophy for privacy in smart agents

Lays groundwork for privacy-empowering smart home technologies

Abstract

The home is often the most private space in people's lives, and not one in which they expect to be surveilled. However, today's market for smart home devices has quickly evolved to include products that monitor, automate, and present themselves as human. After documenting some of the more unusual emergent problems with contemporary devices, this body of work seeks to develop a design philosophy for intelligent agents in the smart home that can act as an alternative to the ways that these devices are currently built. This is then applied to the design of privacy empowering technologies, representing the first steps from the devices of the present towards a more respectful future.