Evaluating interface designs for user-system interaction media in buildings

Occupant control actions in a building (i.e., user interactions with environmental systems for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, etc.) can significantly affect both indoor climate in and the environmental performance of buildings. Nonetheless, relatively few systematic (long-term and high-resolution) efforts have been made to observe and analyze the means and patterns of such user-system interactions with building systems. Specifically, the necessary requirements for the design and testing of hardware and software systems for user-system interfaces have not been formulated in a rigorous and reliable manner. This paper includes an exploration of the requirements and functionalities of user interfaces for building systems in sentient buildings. We first compare a number of commercial user-interface products for building control systems. Thereby, we consider three dimensions (information types, control options, and hardware) and seven criteria (functional coverage, environmental information feedback, intuitiveness, mobility, network, input, and output). We then present the results of an experiment, in which 40 participants examined and evaluated a selected number of user interfaces for buildings’ control systems, mainly in view of their first impressions, user-interface layout design, and as well as ease of learning. The outcome of these studies are expected to serve as the starting point for developing a new generation of user-interface models to promote higher levels of connectivity between occupants and sentient environments.