The everyday enactment of interfaces: a study of crises and conflicts in the more-than-human home

Abstract

By 2027 more than 530 M homes will likely adopt at least one type of automated system. This means that a growing number of residents will be living with automated technology in the home, everyday. But living with smart homes is full of conflicts between what residents find appropriate and what technology does instead. Previous research, centering end-user needs, has often focused on smooth living experiences through graphical user interfaces and improved predictions. In this research, we take the more-than-human lens of co-performance to put crises in everyday practices in view, and to conceptualize a new notion of interface. Based on ethnographic data from 11 households, our findings illustrate how crises reveal conflicting ideas of appropriateness, how residents reconfigure their co-performances with technology in response to everyday crises, and how new interfaces are enacted as a result. We conclude by illuminating how researchers and designers should not look at the conflicts and crises emerging in the more-than-human home as something of which to get rid. Instead, they are opportunities for residents and buildings to respond to one another in the context of everyday life and to enact interfaces that were not pre-designed into the building.