Sweet iintelligent home - user evaluations of MIMOSA housing usage scenarios

This paper presents and analyses the results of the MIMOSA project's first user evaluation activities, the scenario evaluations carried out in summer 2004. The scenarios covered five different application fields: everyday, sports, fitness, health care and housing. In this paper the author concentrates on housing scenarios which were evaluated by VTT in Finland and by Legrand in France. According to the evaluation results the main challenge with housing systems is co-operation with existing house information systems. The users are not carrying their mobile phones with them at home, so the mobile phone centric system has to be based on the mobile phone connecting to the existing house network. Preventing problems (water leaks, unwanted visitors etc.) is one of the main positive effects that the potential users of a new technology valued. Extensive automation of home system raised fears but also advantages were noticed particularly for certain user groups