Tariff Agent: Interacting with a Future Smart Energy System at Home
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Smart systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and consequently transforming our lives. The level of system autonomy plays a vital role in the development of smart systems as it profoundly affects how people and these systems interact with each other. However, to date, there are very few studies on human interaction with such systems. This paper presents findings from two field studies where two different prototypes for automating energy tariff-switching were developed and evaluated in the wild. Both prototypes offer flexible autonomy by which users can shift the system's level of autonomy among three options: suggestion-only, semi-autonomy, and full autonomy, whenever they like. Our findings based on thematic analysis show that flexible autonomy is a promising way to sustain users' engagement with smart systems, despite their occasional mistakes. The findings also suggest that users take responsibility for the undesired outcomes of automated actions when delegation of autonomy can be adjusted flexibly.
Date Issued
2016-08-01
Date Acceptance
2016-05-01
Citation
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 2016, 23 (4)
ISSN
1073-0516
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Journal / Book Title
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
Volume
23
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2016 ACM. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2943770.
Subjects
Human Factors
0806 Information Systems
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
25