A Design Philosophy for Agents in the Smart Home

Abstract: The home is often the most private space in people's lives, and not one in which they expect to be surveilled. However, today's market for smart home devices has quickly evolved to include products that monitor, automate, and present themselves as human. After documenting some of the more unusual emergent problems with contemporary devices, this body of work seeks to develop a design philosophy for intelligent agents in the smart home that can act as an alternative to the ways that these devices are currently built. This is then applied to the design of privacy empowering technologies, representing the first steps from the devices of the present towards a more respectful future.