Designing for Appropriate Degrees of Automation: A Practice Innovation Framework Applied to Home Energy Management

Designing next generation human-automation systems—novel technologies—is challenging because there are many unknowns. The needs and expectations of end users and the complexity of scenarios can vary considerably. Such needs, expectations and complexities must be addressed by designing for appropriate degrees of automation. Technology designed with these considerations should enhance user experience if it matches user expectations and information processing needs. In this exploratory case study, a practice innovation framework was proposed and applied to a novel system that manages energy use in smart homes. Twelve potential usage scenarios were created to systematically test four stages of automation, which were embedded within the system as feature options for participants to interact with during the study. Results revealed appropriate stages of automation and automation trust was captured in a posttest survey. These results, leveraged by proposed framework, were instrumental to the functional design of novel home energy management technology.