Understanding concepts, methods and tools for end-user control of automations in ecosystems of smart objects and services

The continuously increasing number of connected objects and sensors is opening up the possibility of introducing automations in many domains to better support people in their activities. However, such automations to be effective should be under the user control. Unfortunately, people often report difficulties in understanding the surrounding automations and how to modify them. The goal of this paper is to provide a multi-perspective view of what has been done in terms of design, tools, and evaluation in the area of end-user control of automations in ecosystems of smart objects and services. For each aspect we introduce the main challenge, the current possible approaches to address it, and the issues that still need further investigation.