Photo by https://www.guhg.co.uk/making-your-homes-smarter-for-the-future/
ArtCenter College of Design
IF: Journal of Interactive + Inclusive Futures
Smart Home 2035
Jiaying Wang, Feng Ye, Pengmao Li
Future Connects Home
Prefab house is not a new concept, but it has become more popular in recent years. Another trend is more and more people are starting to use smart home devices in their houses. So our team starts to think about how to combine Prefab house and smart home devices and bring a seamless user experience when they live in prefab houses in the future.
Mission
Our vision is to create an intelligent and comfortable home environment that embraces smart technology for homeowners.
We want to reinvent the elements that people may not normally think are related to the living experience. Still, it will become essential in the future, such as health tracking, system diagnosis, to make them more intelligent, efficient, and convenient for homeowners.
Trends
2030
Popularization of artificial intelligence & voice assistant
The more personalized and diverse digital shopping experience
Efficient power usage strategy: renewable & self-generating energy
2040
Smart home technology software upgrade
Immersive entertainment experience
Add a new function to the existing space: kitchen with nano garden, Generate solar power
2050
Prefab house material update
Customize Assistive robot
Second-hand prefab house sale and buy
Future Smart Homes In 2035
Technology
By 2035, smart homes will truly learn about their homeowners through advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence. Smart home hubs will serve as the brain for entire homes: gather, analyze, and act upon residents’ data, turning out to be fully automated by the Internet of Things (IoT). AI assistants could handle most of the chores.
Economy
Automation and advanced technologies lead to higher prices. Due to the popularization of smart homes devices, the smart-home market share and money spent on IoT systems will continue rising.
Health
Health applications will also drive attention with advanced sensors and cameras, enabling easy, straightforward, and efficient body condition tracking. Cameras located in medicine cabinets will tell the exact locations of medicine containers and check if residents have followed their prescriptions.
Environment
Technological developments on house materials and energy tracking will drive greater attention well beyond what we have today. Generation Alpha is predicted to live in 3D printed, low carbon prefabricated houses. Homes will have sensors to gather consumption data and use sustainable technologies to reproduce energy.
Important Insights
Fogponics
Fogponics, or fog and ponics (labor) can be defined as working fog. In its simplest meaning, in the fogponic system, growers use the fog to grow plants.
The fogponic system uses electric foggers to pump and vibrate under pressure to transform nutrient and water mix into humidity, like the humid atmosphere found in the rainforest. This creates a constant humid and nutrient-rich fog for plant roots
Smart Home for Health
IoT and smart homes, when combined with the cloud, will revolutionize digital health and will expand the role of digital health beyond elderly care and health monitoring to other areas of wellness, nutrition, exercise, sleep, medication monitoring, mental, social wellbeing, managing pregnancy, and prenatal health, among others.
For example, a person has a fall or doesn’t take their medication. His family will know immediately. However, the person living in the smart home maintains their autonomy and sense of independence.
Delphi Method
Photo by awpixel-com
Topic1:
How might integrate ambient smart homes and office technologies for mass global audiences look in the next few years?
During the research, we found some functions that are necessary for the smart home.
Energy Efficiency
Energy Efficiency we found some ideas, like a better water recycling system, highly insulated windows, and more innovative materials.
House Security
Security, outdoor camera, motion detect camera, video doorbell.
Control Method
Voice control, gesture control, Virtual assistant, sensor tracking.
Then, like Health functions, smart pill dispensers, Chronic Disease Management systems, and smart kitchen robots, AR/VR entertainment functions. People can add those features to their house by needs and interests.
Topic2:
How might we shop for, customize, finance, purchase or lease, and remotely manage our living and working spaces?
Consider how people shop for, customize, finance, purchase or lease, and remotely manage our living and working spaces.
Ordering experience
So people use phones as AR cameras to visit new houses. They can use VR to simulate the experience of walking through a house.
New business models
New business models for low-income: People can lease a smart prefab home or buy a second-hand smart home.
Prefab house popularity
Modular construction will be more and more popular. Based on people’s need to add or remove parts to help people save money.3D printing can decrease home construction costs.
Accessible design
Disable people also can interact with smart home devices, accessible software, and hardware. For example, the robot will help disable people do housework.
Causal Layered Analysis
Persona
User Scenario
1.
Dev wakes up in the morning. The system mentions that his body condition is better than the last month and reminds him to take medicine. And that's how he starts his day, by hearing reports about himself.
2.
It's time for lunch. Dev goes to the kitchen. He takes some spinach from the indoor garden in the kitchen. The vegetable cabinet gives him the freedom to get fresh vegetables whenever he wants. And also keep his hobby of planting.
3.
After lunch, the smart home system notifies him that there are some empty spaces in the vegetable cabinet. He can now plant more vegetables, all he needs to do is to order seeds on his smart home system.
4.
The community store sends a drone to deliver the seeds to Dev's house. The house AI signs the package for him because Dev is not at home at this moment. Dev can see the updates on his phone as well.
5.
He then notices the system telling him that the sewer is blocked, but this isn't a big problem, because, with the help of the smart home system, he can schedule with a plumber within one click.
Information Architecture
Final Mockup
Smart Home Hub
IoT and smart homes, when combined with the cloud, will revolutionize digital health and will expand the role of digital health beyond elderly care and health monitoring to other areas of wellness, nutrition, exercise, sleep, medication monitoring, mental, social wellbeing, managing pregnancy, and prenatal health, among others.
Home Page
Users are able to take control of all the smart home devices he/she has. Other functions include viewing energy consumption & generation data and getting notifications.
Health Tracking
By taking a pill that has a sensor embedded, users would be able to view his/her recent body conditions and get reports. In our low-fi version, the screen is text-heavy and full of data. Then we chose to collapse the data into blocks, where users could view details with a simple tap.
Select a Room
By using Connect Homes' recent floor plan (Connect Homes 4), we created this overview page. Users would be able to switch between rooms to control or view the smart devices inside that room.
Control The Device
This is where users would be able to control smart home devices. We applied neomorphism to our design, which implements a minimalist approach while giving a sense of 3-dimensions.
Indoor Nano Garden
The environmental benefits of organic farming will be a key driver for future food production. Fogponics is a sub-technique of aeroponics. Plants grow thanks to nutrients that are delivered via fog. This fog creates a constant nutrient-rich environment for plant roots.
Garden Overview
Users can view the summary information of Nano Park, such as humidity, temperature, fertilizer, harvestable plants, etc.
Garden Details
The details page shows individual plant information. In addition, users can view the details of each shelf.
Recommend Ordering
The system can be based on nano garden usage rate, user preference, and season information to recommend plants. Users can order from this page directly.