Tariff Agent: Interacting with a Future Smart Energy System at Home

Smart systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and consequently transforming our lives. The level of system autonomy plays a vital role in the development of smart systems as it profoundly affects how people and these systems interact with each other. However, to date, there are very few studies on human interaction with such systems. This paper presents findings from two field studies where two different prototypes for automating energy tariff-switching were developed and evaluated in the wild. Both prototypes offer flexible autonomy by which users can shift the system's level of autonomy among three options: suggestion-only, semi-autonomy, and full autonomy, whenever they like. Our findings based on thematic analysis show that flexible autonomy is a promising way to sustain users' engagement with smart systems, despite their occasional mistakes. The findings also suggest that users take responsibility for the undesired outcomes of automated actions when delegation of autonomy can be adjusted flexibly.