A Study of Smart Home User Personas Based on Context Theory

Abstract

To achieve a safe, convenient, comfortable, and environmentally friendly home life experience, smart home field has reached a new stage of development, where actively providing user-centered service is crucial. Therefore, it needs to capture the real needs of users in different contexts accurately. This study proposes a theoretical method and structural model of user personas construction in the field of smart home. Firstly, we analyze the current research on smart home, and review the connotation and characteristics, construction methods, advantages and disadvantages of user personas. Then, we explain context theory and propose a method to build smart home user personas by combining context theory. The smart home product terminals and platforms collect and analyze user data in different contexts, and obtain contextual information including user, environment, time, and task, which are the elements of user behavior patterns and living habits to build a dynamically updated user persona with rich contents. This user personas model can be used in smart home platforms to provide active services and personalized recommendations for users, as well as help Eco-chain product iteration and design decisions.