Towards understanding the transparency of automations in daily environments

This paper outlines a proposal for how to address transparency of automations in daily environments, such as smart homes, based on experiences carried out in previous projects. The trigger-action programming paradigm has been used to describe and implement such automations in both commercial and research tools. Such automations can be generated through machine learning techniques or directly by the end users or through an interaction between an intelligent agent and the user. When they are executed the resulting behaviour does not always result in the desired actions, and users may have difficulties in understanding and controlling them. Thus, there is a need for design criteria and associated tools that help people to understand and control what happens with the automations active in the environments where they live, and explain how they work and can be modified to better meet their needs.