End-user interfaces for energy-efficient semantically enabled smart homes

The need for energy efficient technological solutions is becoming ever more prevalent in today’s world. However, current advances are failing to offer end-consumers with a flexible solution that can be widely implemented in domestic or business environments. This is particularly relevant at the user interface level where energy consumers should be allowed to easily engage in effective energy saving technology. With the help of semantically linked data, we aim to actively assist end-consumers in making well-informed decisions in order to successfully control their energy consumption. By integrating smart metering and home automation functionality, our SESAME system offers end-consumers energy-efficient and cost-cutting options for their homes or businesses. The developed SESAME system conceptualizes, demonstrates and evaluates a variety of innovative end-consumer services, here focusing specifically on their user interface paradigms. In this paper, we present three types of interactive participatory user interfaces, all of which enable users to interact with the house automation settings modelled as semantic rules, as well their evaluation in user studies based on the demonstrator system. We show that the proposed interfaces have the potential for broad acceptance, and provide a detailed analysis of the effectiveness of their varying design principles and features.