Understanding user needs in smart homes and how to fulfil them

Smart homes are becoming a widespread reality given the increasingly available number of connected objects and sensors. However, it is still unclear what people expect from automations that are made possible by this technological evolution. In addition, it is unclear whether current trigger-action programming (TAP) languages offer sufficient operators and constructs to specify the desired automations. In this paper, we report on a study aiming to provide useful elements to address such issues. It involved 34 users without experience in IoT programming who created 204 desired home automations. We discuss an analysis of such results in terms of the relationships found between smart-home components and of the requirements for novel operators in TAP languages.