TransforM – Transparency for Machinery in Personal Pervasive Smart Spaces

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The project TransforM is a follow-up project to the SPP-2199 project PerforM, which investigated personality as an interaction paradigm for robotic smart spaces. PerforM has built a so-called "room intelligence", i.e., smart living environment with robotic elements and intelligent kitchen appliances, which can be addressed as a coherent entity and exhibits a certain personality towards its users. During the exploration of this paradigm in user studies, it became clear that there is a conflict between the wish for transparency of such an environment (the user can understand what is going on behind the scenes) and the wish for invisibility of technology, especially in the home context (the user wants things to simply work, and not deal with all the details, in a cozy atmosphere). Providing the right level of transparency turns therefore out to be crucial for acceptance of such an environment. Building on transparency concepts from Explainable AI and interpersonal communication, we investigate how transparency can be constructed and communicated in personal smart spaces such as the room intelligence and beyond. We propose to design a language and toolbox of transparency building blocks which we will evaluate it in several user studies. Among other, these studies will help us to understand how the transparency building blocks are perceived by the user, how transparency relates to trust and acceptance and whether it is possible to identify a “transparency sweet spot”. Moreover, we will explore the potential of adaptable transparency which considers individual user characteristics and preferences (e.g., technical expertise, personality differences). Based on these studies, we will extract general scalable interaction paradigms and design guidelines for future smart spaces, which ensure that these are neither too intransparent nor too overwhelming, and will – by the right level of transparency – receive an adequate calibrated amount of trust from their users.