A has lavish home in New York City may have a "smart-home" system that can remotely control the lighting, window shades, entertainment systems among others but such a system can break often, may be at least 5 times a year, and when it happens, it is so frustrating it can drive the homeowner crazy. With a similar experience stated above, hotelier and real-estate developer Ian Schrager decided not to include a smart-home package at his company's new luxury-condo development in the Bowery district of Manhattan, and hasn't included one in any of his previous projects.
"It can be a lot of bells and whistles that people don't like," says Mr. Schrager, noting that he just returned from a hotel in Italy where the minibar lights would turn on automatically, waking his wife in the middle of the night, when he passes by. It has been predicted that by the end of the year 20 million households in the United States will have some form of pre-programmed smart-home device, double the number in 2012, according to a Strategy Analytics Inc., a global technology market-research firm based in Newton, Mass. By then, most people would be able to unlock the front door as the drive into the garage with a push of a button. But some homeowners find themselves frustrated by the creation of such technology. These homeowners complain about how complex once-simple task has become after being unable to set the preferences right, causing the system not to function the way it is supposed to.
But he key to the smart-home success is to reduce the number of steps to operate it, according to Therese Peffer, who has been studying thermostats for over a decade as a researcher at the California Institute for Energy and Environment at Berkeley. She found out in a study that the more decision are incorporated in the systems programming, the more the users got lost.
