Devices, Information, and People: Abstracting the Internet of Things for End-User Personalization

Nowadays, end users can take advantage of end-user development platforms to personalize the Internet of Things. These platforms typically adopt a vendor-centric abstraction, by letting users to customize each of their smart device and/or online service through different trigger-action rules. Despite the popularity of such an approach, several research challenges in this domain are still underexplored. Which "things" would users personalize, and in which contexts? Are there any other effective abstractions besides the vendor-centric one? Would users adopt different abstractions in different contexts? To answer these questions, we report on the results of a 1-week-long diary study during which 24 participants noted down trigger-action rules arising during their daily activities. Results show that users would adopt multiple abstractions by personalizing devices, information, and people-related behaviors where the individual is at the center of the interaction. We found, in particular, that the adopted abstraction may depend on different factors, ranging from the user profile to the context in which the personalization is introduced. While users are inclined to personalize physical objects in the home, for example, they often go "beyond devices" in the city, where they are more interested in the underlying information. Our findings identify new design opportunities in HCI to improve the relationship between the Internet of Things, personalization paradigms, and users.