Design and Operation of Smart Homes in U.S.A. and Korea

Kyeong-Ah Jeong

Ph.D. Candidate

Major Professors:  Gavriel Salvendy and Robert W. Proctor.

ABSTRACT

The main goal of this dissertation is to establish guidelines for user-centered smart home design and operation for Americans and Koreans.

The first part of this dissertation investigated what types of devices and functions the potential smart home users would want to include in their homes and what their expectations would be. Surveys were conducted in U.S.A. (N = 210) and South Korea (N = 282). The survey questionnaire contained 80 questions with construct validity regarding smart home definition, device, function, network, interaction and control. The following five factors were derived: Environmental connection and control, smart devices (appliances) and their connection, physical safety and security concerns, comfort and relaxation issues, and control restriction issues. All the five factors showed statistically significant differences between the American and Korean respondents. To environmental connection and control, and control restriction issues, the American respondents showed higher preference than the Korean respondents did. To smart devices (appliances) and their connection, physical safety and security concerns, and comfort and relaxation issues, the Korean respondents showed higher preference than the American respondents did.

The second part of this dissertation investigated how to design smart home interfaces. Specifically, an experiment was conducted to find the groupings for smart home interfaces that most closely match the thinking styles of Americans and Koreans. The independent variables were grouping method, culture and gender. 40 American and 40 Korean students’ perceptions of the interfaces and their performance times with the interfaces were measured. The experimental results indicated the following. Koreans’ mental representations regarding smart home interface design requires thematic structure / field dependence, whereas for Americans, functional structure / field independence is required for males and spatial structure / field dependence is required for females.

User-centered design and operational guidelines for Americans and Koreans were developed regarding both ‘What’ and ‘How’ aspects of smart homes. Building smart homes based on these guidelines should increase effectiveness and efficiency of smart home design and operation and people’s overall satisfaction with smart homes.