A Media Architecture Approach to Designing Shared Displays for Residential Internet-of-Things Devices

Research on media architecture to date has predominately focused on the integration of digital technologies, such as low-resolution media façades, into urban environments within a public context. In this paper, we present an analysis of two case studies, which investigated the use of low-resolution display technologies within a residential context for visualizing data streams generated by Internet-of-Things devices. Each study involved the deployment of a display prototype and both studies focused on visualizing electricity data. The first study used the front yard as a deployment location to encourage friendly neighborhood competition on electricity consumption and the second study focused on visualizing the performance of residential solar panels in the home. The paper discusses how we used media architecture principles as a framework to inform the design of both prototypes. Based on an analysis of the two cases, we present seven design insights for residential low-res displays as well as a series of design recommendations for residential media architecture.