Future of Home-living: Designing Smart Spaces for Modern Domestic Life

TL;DR

This paper explores the future of smart home technologies, emphasizing agentic systems like robots and virtual agents, and their integration into diverse domestic arrangements to reshape household dynamics and design challenges.

Contribution

It introduces a taxonomy of challenges and opportunities for integrating agentic technologies into modern, diverse domestic living environments.

Findings

Development of a taxonomy of design challenges

Insights into boundary fluidity in smart homes

Framework for integrating agentic technologies

Abstract

The evolution of smart home technologies, particularly agentic ones such as conversational agents, robots, and virtual avatars, is reshaping our understanding of home and domestic life. This shift highlights the complexities of modern domestic life, with the household landscape now featuring diverse cohabiting units like co-housing and communal living arrangements. These agentic technologies present specific design challenges and opportunities as they become integrated into everyday routines and activities. Our workshop envisions smart homes as dynamic, user-shaped spaces, focusing on the integration of these technologies into daily life. We aim to explore how these technologies transform household dynamics, especially through boundary fluidity, by uniting researchers and practitioners from fields such as design, sociology, and ethnography. Together, we will develop a taxonomy of challenges and opportunities, providing a structured perspective on the integration of agentic technologies and their impact on contemporary living arrangements.