Dramatic Things

2021 - 2023

Imagine you live in a smart home and it is hot outside. The smart thermostat requests the smart curtains to close so that the room temperature would stay stable and less energy will be consumed. The smart TV concurs as closed curtains would provide better contrast, thus a more pleasant experience for the user. However, the smart pots and the smart security camera request the curtain to stay open. The former wants sunlight to ensure the plants’ wellbeing and the latter wants the outsiders to see that there is someone at home, thus improve the home’s security. So, who wins? In the very near future, the digital space created in smart homes through the dynamic interconnectedness of smart products is likely to enact value conflicts and unforeseen forms of interaction. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate how products could communicate and negotiate conflicting values when thinking about the future of domesticity.

In this project, we—Maria Luce Lupetti (Politechnico di Torino), Luciano Cavalcente Siebert (Tu Delft), Janna van Grunsven (TU Delft) and myself—investigated the potential implications of these value conflicts and the corresponding design challenges. Through an enactment session and co-speculations with professional actors, we explored what it means to navigate multiple values simultaneously, live with products that impose their own values, and manage value conflicts both with and among smart products. The findings challenge the seamless and harmonious vision of smart homes conceived by technologists, proposing shifts in the common narrative: from value alignment to value transparency, from service provision to mutual care, and from autonomy to responsiveness.

Related Publications:

Cila, N., Lupetti, M. L., Cavalcante Siebert, L., & Grunsven, J. (2025). Dramatic Things: Investigating value conflicts in smart home through enactment and co-speculation. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA