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Designing for Healthy, Affordable, and Sustainable Human-HVAC Interactions for Heating in Smart Homes

Delong Korus-Du

arXiv:2609.07936v1cs.HCcs.CYcs.MMcs.SI

TL;DR

Household heating is increasingly a negotiation involving energy use, affordability, health, and care, while research on residents’ HVAC interactions remains fragmented across disciplines. This thesis combines a multidisciplinary review, living lab and co-design studies, VR prototyping, and physical-digital prototype development; preliminary findings frame interaction as situated control and feedback and highlight gaps in cohabitants’ awareness of thermal needs.

  • Problem

    Research on residents’ interactions with HVAC, particularly heating, remains fragmented across disciplines, while household decisions must balance energy costs with health and care needs under unequal constraints.

    Source: §1 · p. 2

  • Method

    The thesis combines a multidisciplinary literature review, longitudinal living lab and co-design studies, VR-based smart home prototyping, and development of physical-digital prototypes.

    Source: §1 · p. 2, §5 · p. 3

  • Results

    The review frames Human-HVAC Interaction as situated control and feedback, and household findings indicate that cohabitants may be less aware than thermally vulnerable residents of residents’ needs.

    Source: §3 · p. 3

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    The work examines how interfaces and prototypes can support residents in interpreting and responding to heating, energy, and IEQ conditions under everyday constraints.

    Source: §1 · p. 2, §5 · p. 3

    VR cannot fully reproduce temperature, air quality, humidity, and airflow through visual simulation alone.

    Source: §1 · p. 2, §4 · p. 3

Abstract

from arXiv · show

As geopolitical tensions, energy crises, and energy-intensive AI infrastructure intensify concerns about demand, affordability, and resilience, communities increasingly encounter these challenges through everyday energy practices, particularly winter heating. Against this background, the doctoral expos\'e, "Designing Human-HVAC Interaction for Healthy, Affordable, and Sustainable Heating in Smart Homes", is structured around four chapters. First, a multidisciplinary literature review defines and positions Human-HVAC Interaction, focusing on heating in smart homes. Second, longitudinal living lab studies with design probes examine everyday heating practices, thermal comfort, and indoor environmental quality, with attention to thermally vulnerable groups such as older adults, pregnant or menopausal women, parents with infants, and people affected by allergies or airborne pollutants. Third, a VR-based smart home demonstrator explores how heating and IEQ scenarios can be prototyped and evaluated as a virtual living lab, while critically examining the limits of representing bodily indoor climate conditions through VR. Fourth, follow-up design studies examine how VR-based insights can be translated into physical-digital prototypes that combine digital fabrication, distributed environmental sensing, and diverse interface forms for critical heating and IEQ contexts. The thesis aims to contribute a design-oriented understanding of Human-HVAC Interaction by building from a multidisciplinary literature review to empirical living lab and co-design studies, VR-based prototyping, and physical system development, examining how smart home users make sense of, negotiate, and respond to smart HVAC system.

1 Introduction

Heating connects household comfort, health, expenditure, and environmental impact, while energy and affordability pressures make domestic heating decisions increasingly consequential. The thesis responds to fragmented research with a four-chapter trajectory from conceptualization and living lab studies to VR and physical-digital prototypes.

1 Introduction

  • Heating decisions are recurring negotiations over rooms, ventilation, bills, health, and care, with low-income households, residents of inefficient buildings, tenants with limited control, and thermally vulnerable occupants facing tighter constraints.Further reductions can be unsafe or infeasible where consumption is already constrained.Source: §1 · p. 2
  • Research on residents’ interactions with heating remains fragmented across HCI, building science, engineering, architecture, environmental psychology, sociology, and energy studies despite advances in HVAC efficiency and social-practice research.Smart home systems often emphasize monitoring, prediction, automation, and feedback, although everyday conditions cannot be addressed through information or automation alone.Source: §1 · p. 2
  • Thermally and environmentally vulnerable groups may experience heating, ventilation, humidity, and air quality as health, care, and safety concerns, requiring support for situated decisions under bodily, financial, and infrastructural constraints.Relevant groups include older adults, people with cold-related pain, pregnant or menopausal women, parents with young children, and people affected by allergies or airborne pollutants.Source: §1 · p. 2
  • The thesis moves from an interdisciplinary review and longitudinal living lab and co-design studies to VR prototyping and physical artifacts, while treating VR critically because visual simulation cannot fully reproduce bodily indoor climate conditions.The four-chapter trajectory aims to support healthy IEQ, affordable energy use, and sustainable heating practices through Human-HVAC Interaction.Source: §1 · p. 2

2 Research Questions

The research asks how Human-HVAC Interaction can support healthy indoor environmental quality, affordable domestic energy use, and sustainable heating in smart homes. Its sub-questions span disciplinary conceptualization, household competencies, VR prototyping and its limits, and translation into physical-digital prototypes.

2 Research Questions

  • How can Human-HVAC Interaction be designed to support healthy indoor environmental quality, affordable domestic energy use, and sustainable heating practices in smart homes?Source: §2 · p. 2
  • How are Human-HVAC Interaction and heating-related practices conceptualized and studied across HCI, building science, energy research, and related disciplines?Source: §2 · p. 2
  • How can smart home energy management interfaces support households in developing situated, feasible, and health-sensitive competencies for heating, IEQ, and energy management?Source: §2 · p. 3
  • How can VR prototype and study smart heating and IEQ scenarios focused on empathic cohabitation, and what are its methodological limits for representing bodily and sensory indoor climate conditions?Source: §2 · p. 3
  • How can living lab and VR insights be translated into digitally fabricated, sensor-based, networked prototypes across tangible, wearable, ambient, and voice-based interfaces?The question concerns supporting residents as they interpret and respond to heating, energy, and IEQ conditions.Source: §2 · p. 3

3 Preliminary Results

The preliminary work establishes a multidisciplinary conceptual framing of Human-HVAC Interaction and reports household findings about thermal needs, cohabitant awareness, and practical responses. The studies provide foundations for design implications and learning mechanisms for smart home energy management interfaces.

3 Preliminary Results

  • A review of 541 papers frames Human-HVAC Interaction as situated control-and-feedback dynamics between residents’ experiences and practices and HVAC system mechanics.User-initiated interactions include monitoring past and present performance and planning future operation; system-initiated interactions use sensor networks to trigger automation or guide action, connecting comfort and energy management with thermal conditions and energy performance.Source: §3 · p. 3
  • Household members may need shared competencies to understand one another’s thermal needs, negotiate heating practices, and identify affordable and accessible interventions.Examples include reflective foil behind radiators, ventilation adjustments, moving furniture from cold walls, localized warming, and small infrastructural changes based on situated feedback; the analysis organizes findings into design implications and learning mechanisms.Source: §3 · p. 3
  • Thermally vulnerable groups may already understand their own needs, while cohabitants may not, making user-specific recommendations especially relevant to cohabitants.The passage contrasts those recommendations with general tips targeting infrastructural and urban aspects.Source: §3 · p. 3

4 Expected Next Steps

The next studies will use a VR smart home environment to prototype and evaluate Human-HVAC Interaction scenarios, then translate selected scenarios into physical-digital prototypes. Both stages focus on interpreting heating, energy, and IEQ conditions while attending to the limits of visual simulation and the scope of the physical prototypes.

4 Expected Next Steps

  • The VR environment will turn living lab and co-design findings into interactive demonstrations with smart displays, sensor-based feedback, heating recommendations, and IEQ scenarios.It will explore VR as a virtual living lab for household heating practices, HVAC interaction, and learning mechanisms, including role-play in unfamiliar situations.Source: §4 · p. 3
  • VR’s methodological limits require critical examination because temperature, air quality, humidity, and airflow cannot be fully reproduced through visual simulation alone.Source: §4 · p. 3
  • Selected VR scenarios will be translated into physical-digital prototypes using digital fabrication, distributed environmental sensing, and tangible, wearable, smart-glasses, voice, or ambient interfaces.The work will not develop a complete commercial HVAC system; it may inform critical indoor settings such as hospitals, older care, neonatal care, and clean rooms.Source: §4 · p. 3

5 Expected Contributions

The thesis contributes to Sustainable HCI, human-building interaction, and smart home research by connecting conceptual work, household studies, and prototype exploration.

  • A multidisciplinary literature review conceptualizes Human-HVAC Interaction.Source: §5 · p. 3
  • Living lab and co-design studies examine how households interpret, negotiate, and respond to heating, energy, and IEQ recommendations.Source: §5 · p. 3
  • VR-based smart-home scenarios and physical-digital prototypes explore how these insights can be prototyped, evaluated, and translated.Source: §5 · p. 3
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