SITE: The Simple Internet of Things Enabler for Smart Homes

This paper presents the simple Internet of Things enabler (SITE), a smart home solution that allows users to specify and centrally control Internet of Things smart objects. Unlike most existing systems, SITE supports End-User Development. Hence, it defines a simple language for the specification of control rules for smart objects. It also provides a user interface to graphically illustrate the data received from smart objects. To assess the usability of SITE, we conduct an empirical study involving 20 participants belonging to two user groups: users with technical training (IT users) and users without technical training (non-IT users). We demonstrate that both user groups can satisfactorily build smart objects and define control rules in a smart home environment using SITE.