Digital twins can be a key technology when it comes to automation. However, very few research has been focused on the design aspects of digital twins for home automation, the majority of research focuses on the technology itself. As smart home research is shifting from a technologydriven to a consumer-centric and design-driven approach, service design, as a customer-centric design approach, can be beneficial to the development of the automation domain. This research will apply digital twins in home automation based on service design methods.
Automation is not just simply replacing human labor toward machines. It aims to increase the efficiency of activities and provide seamless services to users. For example, a smart thermostat system can adjust the temperature based on various factors such as occupancy, time of day, and weather conditions. It increases the efficiency of heating and cooling activities in the home and provides a more efficient and convenient experience for users, further reducing energy consumption and costs. In this situation, how humans interact with automated systems and how automated decisions impact humans are both critical issues to consider. Conventional home appliance has now become connected and integrated via the Internet of Things (IoT) or other technologies, typically known as smart homes. The introduction of new technologies in smart home will change how people interact with their surrounding environments, which will impact the services provided within homes. As a result, new service functions and features will shape the new user interface and the process of delivering services, which will in turn impact the service logic and service flows. For smart homes, it is necessary to consider new service logic and flows to support emerging scenarios, such as sustainable living.
In terms of studying and designing home
automation systems, Gopinath et al. [
Deploying digital twin technology could help
smart homes become more sustainable, especially
in terms of energy reduction. As part of the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the
United Nations, the seventh goal aims to ensure
access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and
modern energy for all [8]. Therefore, it is
important to develop new types of predictions in
smart homes that can help people save energy and
live a healthier lifestyle, which is also in line with
one of the SDGs - “Ensure healthy lives and
promote well-being for all at all ages.” Home
automation can contribute to indoor energy
management and supervision. The agility and
resilience of digital twins have been identified as
key attributes for increasing automation [
Marikyan et al. [
As new technologies emerge, new design challenges are also brought up in society. To the authors' best knowledge, none of the current literature on design addresses the framework of home automation systems using digital twins. My research aims to fill this gap.
Forlizzi [2018] suggested considering service design to respond to the emerging challenges in the HCI community, which designs for multiple stakeholders and a systemic, value-exchanged, and socio-economic system. Service design thinking has brought benefits for designing for rising trends of technologies, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), social computing, and crowdsourcing platforms [10]. More than that, service design has even been applied to the digital twin domain. Aheleroff et al. [2021] proposed Digital Twin as a Service proposed Digital Twin as a Service (DTaaS) under Industry 4.0. DTaaS is a service that enables access to Digital Twin capabilities, providing access using augmented interfaces across physical, digital, and cyberspace. Its value is to provide a simple, scalable paradigm to realize the importance of mass individualization. Therefore, this service design approach could be also beneficial to home automation research.
Automation is not replacing humans; it is helping humans and our planet become more efficient and sustainable. Home automation is aiming to provide seamless services to humans, which helps improve people’s well-being and reduce energy consumption. As smart home research is shifting from a technology-driven to a consumer-centric approach, service design, as a customer-centric design approach, could have significant impacts on developing new concepts for the automation domain. Based on the service design approach, I expect to develop a new design framework for home automation systems with digital twins, which could lead to more sustainable behaviors in the future.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101034328. This publication reflects only the author’s view and the Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
smart home literature: A user perspective. Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2019). DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/J.TECHFORE. 2018.08.015 [6] Concetta Semeraro, Mario Lezoche, Hervé Panetto, and Michele Dassisti. 2021. Digital twin paradigm: A systematic literature review. Comput. Ind. 130, (September 2021), 103469.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2021 .103469 [7] Angira Sharma, Edward Kosasih, Jie Zhang, Alexandra Brintrup, and Anisoara Calinescu. 2022. Digital Twins: State of the art theory and practice, challenges, and open research questions. J. Ind. Inf. Integr. (August 2022), 100383.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jii.2022.10038 3 [8] United Nations. 2015. Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved October 12, 2022 from https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda [9] Haiwen Zhang, Lin Ma, Jiao Sun, Hansheng Lin, and Matthias Thürer. 2019. Digital Twin in Services and Industrial Product Service Systems:: Review and Analysis. Procedia CIRP 83, (January 2019), 57–60. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2019.0 2.131 [10] John Zimmerman and Jodi Forlizzi. 2019.
Service Design. In Encyclopedia of HumanComputer Interaction (2nd. ed.). Retrieved September 8, 2022 from https://www.interactiondesign.org/literature/book/the-encyclopediaof-human-computer-interaction-2nded/service-design