Probing IoT-based consumer services: 'insights' from the connected shower

Crabtree, Andy; Hyland, Lewis; Colley, James; Flintham, Martin; Fischer, Joel E.; Kwon, Hyosun

Abstract

This paper presents findings from the deployment of a technology probe-the connected shower-and implications for the development of 'living services' or autonomous context-aware consumer-oriented IoT services that exploit sensing to gain consumer 'insight' and drive personalised service innovation. It contributes to the literature on water sustainability and the potential role and barriers to the adoption of smart showers in domestic life. It also contributes to our understanding of context, which enables user activity to be discriminated and elaborated thereby furnishing the 'insight' living services require for their successful operation. Problematically, however, our study shows that context is not a property of sensor data. Rather than provide contextual insights into showering, the sensor data requires contextualisation to discriminate and elaborate user activity. Thus, in addition to examining the potential of the connected shower in everyday life, we consider how sensor data is contextualised through the doing of data work and the relevance of its interactional accomplishment and organisation to the design of living services.

Citation

Crabtree, A., Hyland, L., Colley, J., Flintham, M., Fischer, J. E., & Kwon, H. (2020). Probing IoT-based consumer services: 'insights' from the connected shower. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 24, 595–611. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-019-01303-3

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 21, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Sep 5, 2019
• Publication Date: 2020-10
• Deposit Date: Sep 2, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 2, 2019
• Journal: Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
• Print ISSN: 1617-4909
• Electronic ISSN: 1617-4917
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Pages: 595–611
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-019-01303-3
• Keywords: Internet of Things; connected shower; technology probe; sustainability; context; data work
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2547153
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00779-019-01303-3
• Additional Information: Received: 11 January 2019; Accepted: 21 August 2019; First Online: 5 September 2019; : The research reported in this paper was conducted in accordance with the University of Nottingham’s ethics procedures: ExternalRef removed; : The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.