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"You Can't Just Automate It": Negotiating and Sustaining a "Good" Family Life Through Energy Practices
Yang Hong, Ying-Yu Chen, Wei-Chien Chang, Yu-Hsin Chou, Sharifa Sultana
TL;DR
Smart-home sustainability systems can overlook the culturally and relationally specific meanings of household energy use, and existing accounts give limited attention to families with unequal control. Through interviews and co-design with Taiwanese parent-child families, this study finds that energy arrangements require continual adaptation, shaped by unevenly distributed work. It proposes family IoT that supports shared values while keeping differences visible and open to revision.
Problem
Smart-home sustainability systems often assume efficient, predictable, automatic homes, while less is known about how parent-child families with unequal power negotiate everyday energy practices.
Source: §1 · p. 1, §2.2.3 · p. 3Method
The study combines in-home interviews and co-design with 21 Taiwanese parent-child families to examine energy practices, adaptation, and future smart-home imaginaries.
Source: §1 · p. 2, §3.1 · p. 3Results
Families' energy practices reflected thrift, comfort, care, safety, and responsibility, requiring continual adaptation unevenly distributed across family members.
Source: §1 · p. 2, §8 · p. 14Takeaways & Limitations
Family IoT should support articulation of shared values while keeping plural claims visible and open to contestation and revision.
Source: §1 · p. 2, §6 · p. 11, §8 · p. 14The sample focused on mostly higher-income heterosexual parent-child families in northern Taiwan and captured energy practices at one point in time.
Source: §7 · p. 13
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
This study examines how Taiwanese parent-child families negotiate a "good" family life through everyday energy use and imagine future smart homes that support it. We conducted in-home interviews and co-design sessions with 21 families, including 46 parents and children. We found that families pursued a good life through energy practices shaped by thrift, comfort, care, safety, and enjoyment. These arrangements were continually adapted and responded to changing bodies, schedules, people, and infrastructures. This adaptive work was unevenly distributed, which in turn shaped different smart-home imaginaries. Drawing on the lens of Nearby and adversarial design, we conceptualize adaptation as situated sociotechnical work through which families continually rework energy arrangements. We further distinguish collective goods from plural and contestable goods to show why family IoT must support shared values while preserving opportunities to question and revise household arrangements. We offer theoretical and design directions for more adaptive, participatory, and contestable family IoT.
1 Introduction
Household energy use carries culturally and relationally specific meanings, while smart-home sustainability systems often assume efficiency, predictability, and automation. This study examines how Taiwanese parent-child families negotiate those meanings and how uneven adaptive work shapes their smart-home imaginaries.
1 Introduction
- Smart-home sustainability systems often flatten cultural variation by assuming a well-run home is efficient, predictable, and automatic.What counts as necessary, excessive, or sustainable use varies with climate, housing, and cultural expectations.Source: §1 · p. 1
- Family energy practices in Taiwan connect thrift with comfort, mold prevention, care, safety, and responsible family membership.An air conditioner scheduled off at 2 AM may conflict with a child still being awake; a light left on may ease a child's fear of the dark.Source: §1 · p. 1
- In a study of 21 Taiwanese parent-child families, energy judgments involved thrift, comfort, care, safety, and responsibility, while adaptive work was unevenly distributed.Fathers more often configured technology, mothers adjusted it to changing conditions, and children negotiated and resisted from the margins; their positions corresponded to imaginaries from centralized automation to flexible designs accommodating exceptions.Source: §1 · p. 2
- The paper frames adaptation as situated care work and argues that family IoT should keep plural goods revisable while supporting shared values.It reads household arrangements as ongoing contests over whose comfort, labor, and authority they serve.Source: §1 · pp. 1–2
2 Related Work
Prior work shifts attention from automated devices to care, domestic labor, and socially organized energy practices. It also identifies gaps in understanding energy-related care and negotiation among family members with unequal control.
2.1 Care and Everyday Life in Smart Homes
- Smart-home research increasingly treats technologies as embedded in relations of care, domestic labor, and dwelling rather than as isolated automated devices.Care-oriented accounts include how technologies shape residents' attention and responses to others, and how dwelling conditions and infrastructures matter.Source: §2.1.1 · p. 2, §2.1.3 · p. 2
2.1.1 From Automation to Relational Care.
- Care enacted through automated systems can shape how household members notice needs, respond to others, and perform care.Care ecologies encompass relationships among technologies, residents, dwelling conditions, and wider housing infrastructures.Source: §2.1.1 · p. 2, §2.1.3 · p. 2
2.1.2 Invisible Domestic Labor, Repair, and Everyday Maintenance.
- Smart-home systems may redistribute or increase invisible domestic labor through troubleshooting, workarounds, repair, and maintenance.Household members also make misalignments livable through experimentation, appropriation, curiosity, and humor.Source: §2.1.2 · p. 2
2.1.3 Care Ecologies, Dwelling, and Energy.
- Care-oriented smart-home research has paid less attention to how care intertwines with everyday family energy use and sustainability practices.Cooling, lighting, dehumidification, comfort, safety, and avoiding waste are also decisions about caring for family members and maintaining domestic life.Source: §2.1.3 · pp. 2–3
2.2 Multi-User Smart Homes and Family Energy Practices
- Sustainable HCI moved from individual feedback and behavioral prompts toward socially embedded accounts of household energy practices.Routines and household roles can outweigh abstract sustainability goals, motivating support for flexible, situated practices.Source: §2.2.1 · p. 3
2.2.1 From Energy Feedback to Social Practice.
- Household access and decision-making are often uneven, with pilot users configuring systems while passenger users live with settings they may not control.Prior work also notes gendered configuration roles and that children can influence energy practices when given responsibility and access.Source: §2.2.2 · p. 3
2.2.2 Uneven Control in Multi-User Smart Homes.
- Many smart-home systems encode predefined efficiency values while offering limited support for dialogue, disagreement, or changing household circumstances.Automation can constrain residents' expression of changing bodily comfort and social routines, raising questions about whose preferences are encoded and who must adapt.Source: §2.2.3 · p. 3
2.2.3 Negotiating Energy, Comfort, and Family Authority.
- Less is known about how parent-child dynamics intersect with everyday energy practices and smart-home arrangements, especially outside Western contexts.Treating children as conservation learners and parents as coherent decision-makers can obscure differences in how family members understand waste, care, responsibility, and technological control.Source: §2.2.3 · p. 3
3 Methods
The researchers conducted in-home interviews and co-design with Taiwanese families to examine energy practices and negotiations. Their sessions moved from household routines and individual perspectives to concrete tensions and jointly imagined technologies.
3 Methods
- The study used interviews, home tours, visual mapping, and co-design with 21 Taiwanese families comprising 23 parents and 23 children aged 7 to 12.Families were recruited if they had a child aged 7 to 12 and experience with smart-home or IoT devices related to water, electricity, or gas use.Source: §3 · p. 3, §3.1 · p. 3
3.1 Participants
- Recruitment focused on families with children aged 7 to 12 and household experience with energy-related smart-home or IoT devices.Participants' own use of “smart” varied, so the analysis included connected and non-connected energy-related technologies shaping everyday practices.Source: §3.1 · p. 3
3.2 Study Procedures
- Each 2.5-to-3-hour home session combined a room tour, separate parent and child mapping, individual interviews, and joint co-design.Families used storyboards to reconstruct a specific energy-related tension and imagine technology grounded in that episode.Source: §3.2 · p. 4
3.3 Data Analysis
- The team used reflexive thematic analysis, combining inductive coding with regular comparisons of interpretations and iterative theme review.Interviews were conducted and transcribed in Mandarin; selected English translations were checked by back-translation.Source: §3.3 · pp. 4–5
4 Taiwanese Smart Home and Energy Use
Taiwanese household energy use sits within a context of conservation policy, relatively low utility prices, and family meanings attached to thrift and care. Participating homes also used fragmented smart-home systems with limited cross-brand integration.
4 Taiwanese Smart Home and Energy Use
- Taiwan promotes energy-saving programs and smart appliances, while residential electricity and water prices have often remained low.Residential electricity rates have often been below supply costs, and water prices remained largely unchanged for more than two decades.Source: §4 · p. 5
- In Taiwan, energy conservation is associated with frugality and resource preciousness, while family authority, gendered labor, and care shape household energy practices.The passage links filial piety with parental authority and children's responsibilities, and describes women as carrying greater routine domestic and care work in many families.Source: §4 · p. 5
- Participating households used devices across multiple ecosystems that often required separate apps and offered limited integration.Some families assembled connections through smart switches, sensors, voice control, and one-button scenes.Source: §4 · pp. 5–6
5 Findings
Taiwanese families pursued a good family life through energy practices shaped by thrift, comfort, care, safety, and enjoyment, continually adapting arrangements as family life and household conditions changed.
5 Findings
- Families’ energy practices reflected values including thrift, comfort, care, safety, and enjoyment, while changing circumstances required continual adaptation.Co-design sessions also showed that different experiences of this adaptive work shaped family members’ imaginaries of future smart homes.Source: §5 · p. 6
5.1 Constructing a Good Family Life Through Energy Use
Families made energy use part of a “good” family life through thrift, comfort, care, safety, and pleasure, with appropriate use depending on the needs and values involved.
5.1.1 Thrift and Avoiding Waste.
- Thrift was widely treated as a family virtue: parents passed on “not wasting” through everyday practices and taught children to use resources responsibly.As utility costs became less salient, thrift increasingly meant avoiding energy use that benefited no one, while some parents described conservation as a changed generational emphasis.Source: §5.1.1 · p. 6
5.1.2 Comfort.
- Appropriate comfort depended on bodies, family routines, climates, and past living environments, so families adjusted energy settings around differing needs.One parent checked whether her children were cold and adjusted the air conditioner rather than relying on a fixed setting; family members also disagreed over preferred hot-water temperatures.Source: §5.1.2 · pp. 6–7
5.1.3 Care and Safety.
- Care and safety made some high-consumption practices acceptable, including dehumidification to prevent mold, lighting for an older relative, and extra food storage during COVID-19.Families judged consumption in relation to the needs energy use sustained, such as safe movement through the home or storing enough food.Source: §5.1.3 · p. 7
5.1.4 Fun and Pleasure.
- Children’s long showers could be both a parent’s perceived water waste and a child’s pleasurable time for singing, play, and relaxation.Parents also viewed smart-home tinkering as an adult pleasure, though one participant questioned the need for numerous one-touch functions and their electricity use.Source: §5.1.4 · pp. 7–8
5.2 Adaptation: Continually Making the Good Life Work
Families kept energy arrangements workable through ongoing adjustments to changing people, care needs, material conditions, and technology, with household members sharing adaptation unevenly.
5.2 Adaptation: Continually Making the Good Life Work
- Adaptation meant continually adjusting everyday energy practices and smart-home arrangements as circumstances and tensions changed within existing divisions of household labor and family relations.Participants shared thrift but could differ in other values shaped by upbringing, embodied experience, and local environment.Source: §5.2 · p. 8
5.2.1 Adapting to Changing People and Routines.
- Reminders and automation could stabilize routines, but changes in sleep, comfort, or who was home required family members to notice mismatches and adapt settings.Mothers more often handled repeated reminders, while fathers more often configured technologies; fixed schedules still required manual intervention when routines changed.Source: §5.2.1 · p. 8
5.2.2 Adapting to Nearby Care Needs.
- Families made fine-grained adjustments using intimate knowledge of family members’ needs, while local climate also shaped choices such as avoiding heating but relying on dehumidification.A mother combined air conditioning, blankets, and a fan for children with different temperature needs, and another kept a television on for a child afraid of the dark.Source: §5.2.2 · pp. 8–9, §5.2.3 · p. 9
5.2.3 Adapting to Material and environmental conditions.
- Material limits and safety needs shaped how families coordinated technologies, such as drying laundry in a humid home and timing dehumidifiers or UV lights around bathroom use.One household ran a bathroom dehumidifier after showers and used UV sterilization only when no one needed the room.Source: §5.2.3 · p. 9
5.2.4 When Machines Breakdown.
- When connected devices or appliances failed, family members had to notice problems, fall back on manual controls, or seek repair.A network failure made manual operation unfamiliar after routines had shifted to automation; a running toilet was detected through its sound and a higher water bill.Source: §5.2.4 · p. 9
5.2.5 Parent–Child and Intergenerational Adaptation.
- Energy rules were negotiated across generations: children reminded adults and formed alliances, sometimes serving as technical intermediaries, while visiting grandparents brought different habits.One child became the person relatives asked for help when a voice assistant did not respond as expected.Source: §5.2.5 · p. 10
5.3 Co-designing Future Good Lives
Families imagined smart homes through their different roles in configuring, reminding, and negotiating energy use. Their designs sought to share work and widen access, while participants questioned whether systems could reliably anticipate changing needs or settle household disagreements.
5.3 Co-designing Future Good Lives
- Co-design imaginaries reflected participants’ different household roles: frequent configurators often wanted more automation, reminder-givers wanted shared work, and children sought less parental intervention or more control.These designs were not simply abstract user preferences; they grew from differing experiences of household energy work.Source: §5.3 · p. 10
5.3.1 Automating Away Negotiation.
- Fathers imagined automation reducing communication and negotiation, but even an enthusiastic smart-home user found context-dependent lighting difficult to automate reliably.Proposals included linked devices, motion-triggered lighting, schedules, and remote shutoff.Source: §5.3.1 · p. 10
5.3.2 Delegating Reminder Work.
- Parents and children imagined devices taking over repeated reminders, shifting enforcement from family members to technologies without removing the household rule.Parents also wanted centralized controls to manage reminders and routine adjustments, while one mother’s dependence on her husband’s phone made those changes inconvenient.Source: §5.3.2 · pp. 10–11, §5.3.3 · p. 11
5.3.3 Centralizing Control and Making Consumption Visible.
- Appliance-level energy data could give families shared evidence for discussing bills and routines, while centralized interfaces and broader voice recognition could make control more accessible.Ashley wanted consumption broken down by appliance and location; Henry wanted Google Home to recognize more family members so they could issue commands themselves.Source: §5.3.3 · p. 11
5.3.4 Questioning the Limits of Automation.
- Participants questioned whether sensing and schedules could anticipate changing activities or resolve whose needs should guide a shared device.Lighting, ventilation, UV use, and AC schedules depended on context; Nicole argued that family members still needed to agree and compromise.Source: §5.3.4 · p. 11
6 Discussion
The discussion distinguishes shared family values from legitimate disagreements that remain unsettled. It argues that family IoT should keep household defaults open to challenge while supporting intergenerational practice and reinterpretation of shared values.
6 Discussion
- Thrift and not wasting were the closest examples of collective good, while comfort, safety, and enjoyment often remained plural and contestable because family members experienced arrangements differently.These two forms of good pose different design questions: how to keep positions contestable and how shared values are learned and reinterpreted.Source: §6 · p. 11
6.1 Keeping ‘Plural Good’ Open to Contestation
- Comfort, safety, and enjoyment can remain unsettled, yet an automated setting can make one person’s preference appear to be a household decision.The examples include disagreement over temperature, shower length, and one-button scenes.Source: §6.1.1 · p. 12
6.1.1 When One Position Becomes the Household Default.
- Technical settings and access can make one member’s position durable while leaving others dependent, so household defaults should remain open to revision and challenge.Examples include a husband disabling his wife’s lighting control and Google Home responding more reliably to a child than his mother.Source: §6.1.1 · p. 12
- Family IoT should preserve meaningful disagreement because arguing, correcting, and overriding can help family members reaffirm and revise shared values.Children participated in these negotiations, including by challenging parents’ energy practices.Source: §6.1.2 · p. 12
6.1.2 Designing to Keep Household Differences Contestable.
- Design can make the social provenance of settings visible and allow family members to redirect them, rather than silently fixing a household default.Proposed approaches include showing whose comfort a cooling rule serves, who changed a setting, and requiring defaults to be reaffirmed periodically.Source: §6.1.2 · p. 12
6.2 Supporting Collective Good Across Generations
- Thrift remained a shared value, but its meaning shifted from minimizing consumption toward distinguishing reasonable use from waste through repeated household practices.Ten parents traced practices such as switching off lights and saving water to lessons from their own parents.Source: §6.2.1 · p. 12
6.2.1 Re-articulating Thrift Across Generations.
- Automation can achieve an immediate energy reduction while removing opportunities to practice conservation and reflect on why a household expectation matters.Reminders, visualizations, or delayed automation could preserve opportunities for reflection and for considering when exceptions are justified.Source: §6.2.1 · p. 12
6.2.2 Supporting Children as Participants in Family Values.
- Children already interpreted and enforced family energy values, so collective good is sustained through intergenerational participation, not only one-way instruction.Family IoT could let children respond to reminders, propose exceptions, and question unevenly applied expectations.Source: §6.2.2 · p. 13
6.3 Sustaining Family Goods Through Adaptation and Care
Families sustain shared and contestable goods through situated care work that notices when arrangements no longer fit and revises them. This adaptive work is unevenly distributed, shaping different smart-home imaginaries and raising questions about who bears the labor of flexibility.
6.3 Sustaining Family Goods Through Adaptation and Care
- Adaptation is situated care: families notice when an arrangement no longer fits particular people and conditions, interpret why, and revise it.Examples include waiting until a child falls asleep before activating AC auto-off and raising the temperature when children are wrapped in blankets.Source: §6.3.1 · p. 13
6.3.1 Adaptation as Situated Care Work.
- Adaptive care was unevenly distributed, with fathers more often configuring and optimizing systems and mothers more often noticing mismatches and making adjustments.Families also undertook material care, including operating dehumidifiers, detecting faults, and maintaining homes against humidity and mold.Source: §6.3.2 · p. 13
6.3.2 The Uneven Distribution of Adaptive Care.
- Family IoT should help members notice changing needs, make exceptions, and revise arrangements while showing who sustains flexibility, since seamless automation may shift adaptive work onto them.Evaluation should account for whether systems settle plural goods or automate collective goods in ways that reduce opportunities for practice and reinterpretation.Source: §6.3.3 · p. 13
7 Limitations and Future Work
The study’s scope and timing constrain what it can establish about family energy practices and smart-home arrangements. The authors identify more diverse family forms, longitudinal research, domestic governance, and wider infrastructure as directions for future work.
7 Limitations and Future Work
- The sample comprised heterosexual parent-child families, mostly from northern Taiwan and with relatively high household incomes.The authors suggest studying single-parent, same-sex, and blended families, which may reveal different patterns of authority, care, and gendered energy labor.Source: §7 · p. 13
- Because energy practices were examined at one point in time, the study could not trace change across seasons, children’s development, or longer-term smart-home use.The authors propose longitudinal work such as diary studies or repeated interviews.Source: §7 · p. 13
- The analysis centered on everyday negotiation, care, and adaptation, leaving domestic governance and connections to smart-city infrastructure for future study.Suggested topics include household authority, rule-making, participation, smart meters, utility platforms, and municipal sustainability programs.Source: §7 · p. 13
8 Conclusion
Across 21 Taiwanese families, everyday energy practices reflected multiple judgments about appropriate use and required continual adaptation. The paper frames this adaptation as unevenly distributed care work and calls for family IoT that keeps shared values and plural claims open to negotiation.
8 Conclusion
- The paper offers a family-centered account of how parent-child families negotiate and sustain good family life through everyday energy practices.Source: §8 · p. 13
- Thrift, comfort, care, safety, and enjoyment shaped families’ judgments about appropriate energy use, which required continual adaptation as circumstances changed.The study drew on in-home interviews and co-design sessions with 21 Taiwanese families, including 46 parents and children.Source: §8 · p. 14
- Adaptation was situated care work distributed unevenly across family members, informing design directions that keep collective values articulable and plural claims open to contestation.The directions also recognize the adaptive work families use to keep everyday arrangements workable.Source: §8 · p. 14
A Codebook
Table 2 is identified as a codebook developed from reflective thematic analysis.
A Codebook
- Table 2 presents the codebook developed from reflective thematic analysis.Source: Table 2 · p. 16