IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May 2018 - 65

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Let us consider a likely scenario that takes place in the near
future of a smart city. Lane is a student living in a city that provides many IoT services to its citizens. She likes to walk around
the neighborhoods visiting parks and squares, but also enjoys
exploring new exhibitions at the museums and art galleries.
Every now and then, new smart services are advertised, which
integrate even more automated procedures into everyday life.
The latest IoT services include a personalized recommendation platform for cultural activities, a smart-transport
scheduler that can be linked to the user's alarm clock, and an
updated smart-dorm installation. These new services sound
promising, and Lane soon experiences them by receiving her
first recommendation for a new art exhibition. Yet, she is concerned about how such personalized procedures are implemented and feels overwhelmed by the plethora of new SOs
added around the dorm (and city) infrastructure. She would
like to have more information about all those sensors, what
they measure, and where they are located. Furthermore, she

would like to be able to interact with them and configure the
system behavior according to her current needs.
User acceptance of SOs and, consequently, of CE devices
that support them is the middle step of a three-step process that
ends with the user buying the device in need. What precedes
acceptance? In [6], the authors argue that user perception of the
SOs is the first step. Perceiving the usefulness and the ease of
use of SOs are two major predictors of the behavioral intentions
of the consumer. It has also been demonstrated that the perception of a system's qualities depends on how users interact with
it [7]. Utilizing interfaces that users are already familiar with,
like a smartphone or an augmented reality (AR) application,
tends to create a positive perception for the user. We claim that
in the world of the IoT, the visualization of SOs plays an equally important role for the user's perception, which leads to
acceptance and, finally, purchase of CE technology.
Furthermore, we believe that providing a user interface that
supports AR to represent the SOs of the area allows for better
perception by the users of the smart environment and its functions. AR enables real-time visualization of the smart
devices, thus giving users the ability to monitor and process the operation of objects that interest them, using their
own device. By implementing a user interface based on
AR, we can intensify the natural interaction between
physical objects and users [8].
Understanding how things work also addresses a crucial issue of smart systems, such as the awareness mismatch, i.e., the difference between the context perceived
by the system and the context that is recognized by humans.
Schmidt [9] provides the following guideline: In the user
interface, provide information about the sensory information that is used to determine the context to minimize the
awareness mismatch. Context awareness (CA) is considered to be one of the crucial technologies that will empower the IoT [10].
An augmented representation of an SO aids solving the
awareness mismatch. Users that experience erroneous system behavior due to context mismatch may observe the
augmented SOs and decide about the source of the error.
They may, for example, identify a malfunction or ineffective positioning of a sensor that causes the transmission of
wrongly sensed data. Identifying the problem satisfies the
user and eventually creates stronger bonds of reliability,
which is critical for the acceptance of new technologies
and new CE devices.
Returning to our hero, Lane starts using an application on her smartphone that displays the SOs in the area,
providing information about their functionality and
allowing her to manipulate some of them. Among other
things, she can now identify SOs located around her,
understand their operation, and enable or disable them.
Initially, the application shows too many objects on her
screen, but as the system learns her preferences it
becomes more personalized, visualizing only the relevant objects based on the context of use. Eventually,
Lane can tailor the function of the application according
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