More Than Meets the Eye: Transforming the User Experience of Home Network Management

As computing migrates from the workplace to the home, householders must tackle problems of home network maintenance. Often they lack the technical knowledge or motivation to complete these tasks, making the user experience of home network maintenance frustrating. In response to these difficulties, many householders rely on handwritten reminders or interactive networking tools that are ill-suited for the home environment. In this paper, we seek to understand how to design better home network management tools through a study of sketches created by 40 people in 18 households. In our study, we obtained information about householders' knowledge, practices and needs with respect to home networking. Based on our results, we present guidelines for transforming the user experience of home network management.