Acceptance and attractiveness of smart building solutions to the end-users

The SmartBuilt4EU project has set up four task forces investigating issues related to smart buildings: their objective is to identify the remaining challenges and barriers to smart building deployment, and the associated research and innovation gaps that should be addressed in the near future. Task force 1 investigates how the interactions between any smart building and its users can be facilitated and improved, as a key success factor for the market uptake of smart building solutions.

The topic investigated in year 2021 addressed Acceptance and attractiveness of smart building solutions for the end users. Smart building solutions are a strong leverage for increased energy efficiency in buildings, improved quality of life for occupants and added value for work performance, but only if those solutions are correctly understood and adopted by end users. While numerous smart solutions are being developed for the building sector, they are often designed following a technology-push approach, insufficiently taking into account the actual behaviors of building users and occupants, their expectations in terms of building features and functionalities, but also their reluctance or fears related to Information technologies, in particular the loss of privacy and control.

This White paper focuses therefore on the following questions:

• What is our state of knowledge on building users’ expectations, preferences and behaviours?
• Which of their specificities constitute major barriers or success factors to design fit-for-use smart building products?
• What technical and non-technical solutions can increase the acceptance and attractiveness of smart building solutions?

In its first part, this paper provides a state of the art regarding the following issues, specific attention being paid to EC-funded projects:

• Knowledge of users: understanding of social behaviours and market knowledge (technology acceptance model, knowledge gained about the “ageing in place” requirements and about building user behaviours and influencing factors)
• Workflows and communication to raise acceptance and attractiveness (user-centred and co-design, gamification)
• Technical solutions to raise acceptance and attractiveness (human user interfaces, crowdsensing) A brainstorming process enabled to identify some key barriers and drivers regarding the acceptance of smart building solutions by end users.

A brainstorming process enabled to identify some key barriers and drivers regarding the acceptance of smart building solutions by end users.Based on the State of the Art and the barriers and drivers, a number of research and innovation gaps were identified including: R&D, Demo, regulation & legal framework, certification & standardisation and scaling up & industrialisation. 

The gaps will feed the elaboration of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda on smart building, together with some recommendations targeting policy makers.