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The CIDE Product Testing Lab (PTL) is in the beginning stages of a new project to bring smart home devices into group homes for adults with intellectual disabilities. The goal of this project is to, first, increase the independence and autonomy of the residents by implementing smart home devices that will enable the residents to complete more tasks without assistance. Second, the goal is to decrease the staff burden by increasing the automation of data collection and possibly informing or even simplifying the decision making of the staff.

What can smart home Tech really do?

For example, a smart home device could be utilized to collect data on how many times a resident turns a water faucet on (to wash hands, brush teeth, etc.) per day. Based on this data, the staff members would have quantifiable data with which to inform their decision making to improve the personal hygiene of the residents. Additionally, the smart home system could provide reminders to the resident throughout the day to wash their hands or brush their teeth more often, if needed, which would simplify the staff responsibilities/decisions for that particular activity of daily living.

Early-stage testing and field research

The research team in the PTL has begun early-stage brainstorming and testing by setting up smart home devices in the mock apartment in Bioscience 3 on the Anschutz Medical Campus. This setup allows the team to test the sensitivity and accuracy of the various devices and to determine what scenarios the current devices would be useful for. The mock apartment also informs what additional devices should be considered to expand the opportunities of the residents as they accomplish daily tasks.

The research team will also have the opportunity to tour -several group homes in Wheat Ridge. This will help the team better understand the layout of the homes, where devices could be mounted, and especially what devices would be feasible to implement. Additionally, the research team will be interviewing the staff at these group homes to determine what tasks would be most beneficial for residents to accomplish on their own and what responsibilities could be alleviated for the staff.

Creating a smart dashboard

In addition to the implementation of smart home devices, the research team will work to develop a dashboard for the staff which will display pertinent information for each resident collected from the smart home devices. This system is another area in which the research team will work closely with the group home staff to determine what pieces of information and what alerts would be most useful for the dashboard to display.

This project will first be executed in the Wheat Ridge group homes. Then, using the feedback and knowledge gained from the Wheat Ridge setup, the research team will take the setup to group homes in Pueblo.

Learn more

CIDE research accelerates innovation and advances the development of usable inclusive and healthcare technologies. To learn more about CIDE's research initiatives, please visit the Leaders in Applied Research and Inclusive Design page of our website.