Towards Users’ Optimal and Pleasurable Experience in Smart Environments

Smart environments that incorporate with interactivity and computing are one of the important research themes in the architecture domain.

The challenge of making intelligent built environments that can support comfortable life for individuals has attracted many researchers. By combining a wide range of smart devices as part of the building components, our living spaces can support occupants’ activities and extend their capabilities . Such integration has brought an impact on occupants’ cognitive experiences with their surrounding environments, calling for new living and working styles.

However, as many researchers in the field have paid much attention to intelligent technology,emphasizing ubiquitous sensors and actuators for perceiving occupants’ behaviors and acting upon environments, there is a lack of cognitive insight on understanding occupants’ needs and experience resulting from the interaction with smart environments.
Implementing environments has traditionally been solved by human-centered methods where planners and engineers assess the mutual relations between environments and occupants’ behaviors. The design of smart environments should focus on the human-centered approach, in order to maximize occupants’ optimal and pleasurable experience.

This Research Topic welcomes research contributions on the users’ experience in smart environments involving occupants and examining their interactive experience with smart environments to apprehend the individual evolution of living and working.

The goal is to highlight research issues on interactive experiences that adopt smart services and technologies . This collection could serve as a platform for this particular research field to move forward on cognitive paradigms. We propose to bring together expertise coming from environmental psychology, architecture, interaction design, social sciences and ergonomics, for collaboratively sharing their human-centered approaches

We solicit interdisciplinary articles concerning human factors, e.g. perception, cognition and experience in smart living environment. Manuscripts attempting to expand what is already known in environmental psychology, architecture, interaction design, social sciences and ergonomics are of particular interest and will serve to share knowledge on the opportunities for prospective occupants.

We encourage submissions that apply various methodological approaches in original research articles or present systematic reviews, theoretical models and perspectives. We also welcome experimental research and envision of possible scenarios for smart living on a strong theoretical foundation.

The followings are only example themes, but submissions are not limited to these:

• Analysis of occupants’ perception and cognition in interactive and responsive environments;

• Understanding of living and working that are changed through the smart environments;

• Evaluation of applications associated with wearable devices, mobile computing robotics and network technology etc. for our daily interactive experience;

• Development of methodologies for investigating user experience of smart services and technologies;

• Opportunities and challenges for creating optimal and pleasurable experiences in smart environments that are adapting to occupants’ needs and preferences;

• Conceptual frameworks or models for smart living environment emphasizing user-friendly interaction design to support occupants’ wellness;

• Perspectives of occupants in smart living environments according to age and gender;

• Interdisciplinary discussions and multifaceted debates about the proposed topic;