Empower saving energy into smart communities using social products with a gamification structure for tailored Human–Machine Interfaces within smart homes

Abstract

Residential buildings can contribute to save energy and to decrement electricity consumption in the world. On the other hand, the Internet of Things has allowed the implementation of smart homes that can profile the users. Nevertheless, end-users are not accepting the smart homes due to behavioral problems and usability problems with the Human–Machine Interface (HMI) or with the household appliances. As a solution, social products promote the interaction between the smart home and the consumer by including gamification features in the interface. Thus, smart homes can interact and compete with other houses to reduce energy consumption. Therefore, this paper proposes a three-step framework that takes advantage of social products to promote interaction between smart homes within a smart community to reduce electrical energy consumption. The first step collects from the literature review, the characteristics of the end-users, the behavioral and usability problems, and the most common gamification elements that teach, engage and motivate the user to reduce energy consumption. The second step proposes the gamification elements required for a tailored HMI in each social product and smart home through a fuzzy logic decision. The third step evaluates the interaction between social products in smart homes and the users to test which smart home is reducing more energy consumption. Finally, a three-level tailored gamified mock-up is depicted: level 1 for a single social product, level 2 for the smart home, and level three for the smart community. This mock-up can be implemented in small communities as residential complexes.