Co-designing Community-based Sharing of Smarthome Devices for the Purpose of Co-monitoring In-home Emergencies

TL;DR

This study explores the design and user perceptions of a co-monitoring smart home system involving emergency contacts, highlighting benefits, concerns, and design considerations for enhancing safety and privacy.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights from co-design interviews on how to develop privacy-aware co-monitoring smart home systems for emergencies.

Findings

Participants see safety and peace of mind as key benefits.

Privacy and security concerns are significant barriers.

Flexible access control can mitigate privacy risks.

Abstract

We conducted 26 co-design interviews with 50 smarthome device owners to understand the perceived benefits, drawbacks, and design considerations for developing a smarthome system that facilitates co-monitoring with emergency contacts who live outside of one's home. Participants felt that such a system would help ensure their personal safety, safeguard from material loss, and give them peace of mind by ensuring quick response and verifying potential threats. However, they also expressed concerns regarding privacy, overburdening others, and other potential threats, such as unauthorized access and security breaches. To alleviate these concerns, participants designed for flexible and granular access control and fail-safe back-up features. Our study reveals why peer-based co-monitoring of smarthomes for emergencies may be beneficial but also difficult to implement. Based on the insights gained from our study, we provide recommendations for designing technologies that facilitate such co-monitoring while mitigating its risks.