Programmable Smart Home Toolkits Should Better Address Households' Social Needs

End-user-programmable smart-home toolkits have engendered excitement in recent years. However, modern homes already cater quite well to users’ needs, and genuinely new needs for smart-home automation seldom arise. Acknowledging this challenging starting point, we conducted a six-week in-the-wild study of smart-home toolkits with four carefully recruited technology-savvy families. Interleaved with free toolkit use in the home were several creativity workshops to facilitate ideation and programming. We evaluated use experiences at the end of the six weeks. Even with extensive facilitation, families faced difficulties in identifying needs for smart-home automation, except for social needs that emerged in all the families. We present analysis of those needs and discuss how end-user-programmable toolkits could better engage with both those household members who design new automated functions and those who merely ‘use’ them.