Unraveling connected lives: exploring individual perceptions of smart homes

In our data-driven world, smart devices are seamlessly integrated into our daily lives, offering convenient and user-friendly interactions based on user data. Human-Data Interaction (HDI) provides holistic frameworks to explore how individuals interact with their digital data. However, these are limited in revealing the entanglement of smart technology in everyday home experiences that inherently include multiple individuals. To this end, we conducted an exploratory survey (n=49) on smart home devices that revealed the synergies between smart technology, data, and individuals within different households. The results show people view smart technology in complex ways, recognising both pragmatic and (an)hedonic qualities, which in turn might influence their adoption of smart devices, as well as how they handle personal and shared data. We call for future work that considers data practices beyond the individual to advocate for a holistic social perspective on human-data interactions in the smart home.