Smartline Research
Sensing the Home
Building a bespoke digital dashboard
Installing home smart sensors is a great way to monitor the home environment. They can help to identify and understand issues such as damp, mould and poor air quality.
But how easy is it to understand the data collected by smart sensors? And how can people use the data to make improvements to their home environment?
In this research project we’ve co-designed a bespoke digital dashboard with our Smartline Participants, to help people understand sensor data more easily so that they can take informed action.
Why is this research important?
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Research has found that we spend more than 80% of our daily time indoors in the UK, so living in a poor indoor environment hugely impacts our health. For example, living in a cold, mouldy or damp home can increase the risk of asthma, allergies and mental health issues.
However, detecting and responding to these risks is a challenge for residents and housing providers. That’s because the causes can often be invisible and the impact on people’s health is cumulative, long term, and typically identified retrospectively. Could smart home technology be the solution?
What are the benefits of smart home technology?
Maximising the quality of our home environment is important for our health and wellbeing. A large body of research has shown the potential for smart technology to support people’s health and wellbeing; especially for the elderly, vulnerable, and people living with chronic illness and disabilities.
The technology monitors, detects, and alerts people to poor conditions, prompting a response from residents or housing providers. This response could be making simple lifestyle changes (like opening windows), or making bigger changes to someone’s home (like installing ventilation).
What research has been carried out?
This is a picture of the sensors that have been installed to monitor room temperature and air humidity in people’s homes (image credit: https://housing.invisible-systems.com/temperature-humidity-logger-2?hsLang=en).
To take action, people need to understand the data provided by their home sensors. That is where our ‘Sensing the Home’ research comes in.
In 2017, we installed smart sensors in 320 Coastline Housing homes. The aim was to enable research participants to monitor their home environment, while also enabling Coastline Housing to support people to make their homes as safe as possible. Our research team then hoped to measure the impact of installing the technology on people’s health and wellbeing.
However, things did not go as expected. The research team discovered that very few research participants looked at the digital dashboard that summarises the sensor data. After investigations, the team discovered that participants found it difficult to use and understand. The dashboard was also complicated for the Coastline Housing team to use, making it difficult for them to assess the data quickly and take immediate action.
In March 2020, our researchers decided to create a new digital dashboard. The team conducted interviews and focus groups to understand people’s needs and co-design the new dashboard.
The dashboard’s new and improved features include:
Explanations about what readings mean and how they can affect health
A traffic light system to highlight any risks (e.g. if the humidity is too high)
Guidance on how people can adapt their home to improve health
A bespoke area for Coastline Housing to easily interpret the data
“To address people’s everyday challenges we used the Living Labs Approach, co-designing the dashboard with both the tenants and Coastline Housing. This method of user co-creation is a great way to integrate research and innovation into real-life community settings. ”
How did we build the dashboard?
Our researchers teamed up with Ian Wellaway, our research IT developer, who was tasked with collating all of the historical and new sensor data. Reviewing the feedback from participants, Ian started to test and build a bespoke dashboard that would make the data more accessible.
“First we put Coastline’s version of the dashboard together, helping the team to quickly spot problematic readings. This means the team can go and contact the customer to see what the cause is and how to fix it. For the customer’s dashboard, we designed a visual summary of temperature, air quality and humidity for each room in the house. This shows an hourly, daily, monthly and annual average to help people understand if a reading is unusual.”
How have Coastline been using the dashboard?
Coastline Housing have already been using the new dashboard to help customers understand their home sensors and to identify high risk homes.
For example, Coastline spotted an unusually cold meter reading at one of their customer’s homes. They contacted the resident to investigate and offered support. Read about this case study here.
“The new dashboard uses simple visuals. This ensures our team can quickly identify risks and take immediate action to protect our customers’ health, wellbeing and quality of life. This research has enabled Coastline Housing to improve our customer support while also improving the quality of our homes.”
What happens next?
In November 2021, we launched the new Smartline participant digital dashboard. We offered online support sessions to explain the new dashboard and created a support video and a how-to guide. We also asked participants to complete a feedback form to tell us how they have been using the dashboard, asking them to report any problems or feedback.
Next, we will analyse how many people have used the dashboard to measure its usability, the usefulness of the data and levels of engagement. This will help us to assess how using a user-friendly bespoke dashboard can help people to improve the home environment – both from a household and housing association’s perspective.
A link to the latest research abstract can be found here.
Who is involved with this research?
This collaborative research project is being led by Dr Tim Walker, Ian Wellaway and Belinda Broughton from the University of Exeter, Mark England, Phil Gilbert and Adrian Ankers from Coastline Housing and our Smartline research participants.