An Exploration on Sharing Smart Home Devices Beyond the Home Abhiditya Jha Jess Kropczynski Heather Richter Lipford Pamela Wisniewski University of Central Florida University of Cincinnati UNC Charlotte University of Central Florida Orlando FL, USA Cincinnati OH, USA Charlotte NC, USA Orlando FL, USA abhiditya@knights.ucf.edu jess.kropczynski@uc.edu Heather.Lipford@uncc.edu Pamela.Wisniewski@ucf.edu ABSTRACT smart home users. Thus far, we conducted a pilot study with 19 adults on Amazon Mechanical Turk. In this position paper, we We conducted a web-based survey with 19 smart home users to provide an introduction of relevant work, our empirical methods, gain insights into their thoughts on sharing their smart home and preliminary results. devices with people outside their home. We aim to find whether or not users would like to share particular devices, and why. We 2 Background also studied the motivations and factors which affect their Smart home IoT devices can collect and analyze data within decisions. We found that most people would prefer to share their homes, relay information to users, and enhance the potential for smart camera, security system and locks with family members managing different domestic systems (e.g., heating, lighting, and friends to allow them to access their home for emergencies entertainment) [2]. Most smart home IoT devices offer some and to monitor and take care of their property. form of access control among users within the home. However, these smart home IoT devices also have the capability to share CCS CONCEPTS control with anyone over the Internet. While this technical • Human-centered computing~User studies • Human- capability exists, research on whether and how people would centered computing~Empirical studies in HCI want to share these devices is lacking. He et al.[3] found that home IoT users desired different access KEYWORDS control capabilities for different functionality within a single Smart Devices; Internet-of-Things; Smart Home; Access Control; device. However, they did not explicitly explore whether and IoT Sharing how users would want to share these devices with people not located within their home. Bahirat et al. found that “who” and ACM Reference format: “what” are the most significant parameters in users’ decision to Abhiditya Jha, Jess Kropczynski, Heather Richter Lipford and Pamela allow or reject IoT based information collection [1]. Therefore, Wisniewski. 2019. An Exploration on Sharing Smart Home Devices we asked smart home IoT users with whom outside of their Beyond the Home. In Joint Proceedings of the ACM IUI 2019 Workshops, homes they would like to share their existing smart home devices Los Angeles, USA, March 20, 2019, 2 pages. and for what purpose. We also inquired whether participants would want others to share their devices with them. As such, the novel contribution of this work is examining use cases for 1 Introduction sharing smart home IoT devices beyond the home. The possibilities of sharing smart home Internet of Things (IoT) devices beyond the home are endless, and warrant further 3 Methods exploration on how such user interfaces should be designed. To The user study consisted of an online Qualtrics survey where expand this body of knowledge and to identify possible design each participant was a smart home device user. The study was opportunities for smart home device sharing, we posed the approved by the Institutional Review Board. The survey following high-level research questions: questions were designed to explore the sharing preferences of real smart home device users with a focus on devices, device • RQ1: Which smart home devices are users willing to share capabilities, and sharing those capabilities with others outside of with people outside of their home and for what purpose? one’s home. We recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk and • RQ2: With whom are smart home users willing to share word-of-mouth. The participants were adults residing in the access to their smart devices and what factors affect their decision? United States. The 12 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk were paid $1 upon completion of the survey. To address these questions, we conducted an online survey of 4 Preliminary Results IUI Workshops'19, March 20, 2019, Los Angeles, USA. Copyright © 2019 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying The survey respondents owned an average of 7.07 smart home permitted for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and IoT devices with a standard deviation of 5.4 devices. Age of copyrighted by its editors/author(s). IUI Workshops'19, March 20, 2019, Los Angeles, USA A. Jha et al. respondents varied from 23 to 48 years, the mean age being 34.79 owned more than 15 smart home devices did not want to share years. them with anyone outside of their homes because they felt no need to do so: 4.1 Smart Home Devices Owned and P5: “People that watch my house do not need remote access at the Willingness to Share moment, they can access via codes on the devices on site. Also, we The most common smart home devices were smart TVs (15), do not leave the home often enough to worry too much.” video streaming devices (12), smart speakers or personal voice assistants (12), smart cameras (12), motion/contact sensors (10), Another person said he would only share devices with people smart displays (10), smart lights (9) and smart thermostats (7). who don’t live in his house when they are visiting: Out of the 19 people surveyed, 14 people were willing to share P6: “The only time I would likely share access to my smart home their smart home devices with people outside of their home. devices with people who do not live in my house will be when they are visiting for a prolonged period of time. For example, if I have a 4.2 Devices Shares and with Whom guest staying over, I will provide access to their lights, fan and smart speaker in the guest bedroom. They can issue voice The most common devices participants indicated they would commands to control most devices when they are in home, but that want shared with people outside of the home were Smart does not mean they will be getting their own account or login.” Camera (6 shares), Security Alarm (4 shares), Motion Sensor (4 shares), Flood Alarm (3 shares) and Smart Lock (3 shares). Most The other participants were primarily concerned about privacy people who were willing to share their smart home devices and security breaches, even from the device manufacturers outside of their home wanted to do so with their family (40%) themselves: and friends (21%). Others wanted to share with a partner or P7: “I don’t want anyone spying on me; I especially don’t want spouse who lived outside the home (15%), co-worker (12%), and Amazon or the government spying on me!” acquaintance (12%). 4.5 Reciprocal Sharing 4.3 Reasons for Sharing Smart Home Devices In terms of reciprocal sharing, most people stated that they The participants provided various reasons for sharing their would prefer access to a family member’s or friend’s smart smart home devices with people outside of their home. The most camera, security system and locks to be able to access their home common theme was allowing access to the home for emergency for emergencies and to monitor and take care of their home and situations and monitoring the home when they are not home. pets. These cases often involved sharing of smart locks in case of emergencies, such as: 5 Conclusion P1: “Access to the house and know if someone breaks in.” We are exploring end users’ perceptions of smart home sharing Another commonly stated reason was taking care of pets when beyond the home. Our pilot results indicate that there are their owners are not home: reasons people desire and can benefit from this sharing. We are P2: “If our house was on fire, I would hope someone would try to conducting a full survey with more participants to gain save our dog.” additional insights. The sharing of smart cameras was always data sharing rather ACKNOWLEDGMENTS than remote control. People wanted to share access to their This research was funded by Mozilla Research. We thank them cameras to trusted family and friends so that they can watch for their support. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or over their homes when they can’t themselves. One person recommendations expressed in this material are those of the provided the following reason for sharing her camera with a authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of our research family member who lived out of her state. sponsor. P4: “So that she can access my camera time to time and ensure my house is safe even when I am there or not.” REFERENCES [1] P. Bahirat, Y. He, A. Menon, and B. Knijnenburg. 2018. A Data-Driven Approach to Developing IoT Privacy-Setting Interfaces. In Proceedings of IUI She justified sharing her smart doorbell with her family member 18, 165–176. who lived out of state as follows: [2] S. K. Firth, F. Fouchal, T. Kane, V. Dimitriou, and T. M. Hassan. 2013. Decision P4: “For the safety purposes. She can inform me if someone is at my support systems for domestic retrofit provision using smart home data streams. 30th International Conference on Applications of IT in the AEC door when I am out for a vacation. I can then act accordingly.” Industry. [3] F W. He, M. Golla, R. Padhi, J. Ofek, M. Dürmuth, E. Fernandes, and B. Ur. 2018. Rethinking Access Control and Authentication for the Home Internet of 4.4 Reason for Not Sharing Smart Home Things (IoT). 255–272. Devices Five people indicated they would not share their smart home devices with anyone outside of their home. Two persons who