Controlling the Rooms: How People Prefer Using Gestures to Control Their Smart Homes

Gesture interactions have become ubiquitous, and with increasingly reliable sensing technology we can anticipate their use in everyday environments such as smart homes. Gestures must meet users’ needs and constraints in diverse scenarios to gain widespread acceptance. Although mid-air gestures have been proposed in various user contexts, it is still unclear to what extent users want to integrate them into different scenarios in their smart homes, along with the motivations driving this desire. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether users will remain consistent in their suggestions when transitioning to alternative scenarios within a smart home. This study contributes methodologically by adapting a bottom-up frame-based design process. We offer insights into preferred devices and commands in different smart home scenarios. Using our results, we can assist in designing gestures in the smart home that are consistent with individual needs across devices and scenarios, while maximizing the reuse and transferability of gestural knowledge.