行政院國家科學委員會專題研究計畫...
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行政院國家科學委員會專題研究計畫 期中進度報告
以 U化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現(13)
期中進度報告(精簡版)
計 畫 類 別 整合型
計 畫 編 號 NSC 97-3114-E-168-001-
執 行 期 間 97年 11 月 01 日至 98年 10 月 31 日
執 行 單 位 崑山科技大學電腦與通訊系
計 畫主持人盧春林
共 同主持人陳淑美郭崇仁曾昭雄劉崇汎蔡崇洲
鄭國順
報 告 附 件 出席國際會議研究心得報告及發表論文
處 理 方 式 本計畫可公開查詢
中 華 民 國 98年 10 月 30 日
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助專題研究計畫 成 果 報 告 期中進度報告
以 U化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現(13)
計畫類別 個別型計畫 整合型計畫
計畫編號NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
執行期間 97 年 11 月 1 日至 98 年 10 月 31 日
計畫主持人盧春林
共同主持人陳淑美郭崇仁曾昭雄劉崇汎蔡崇洲鄭國順
計畫參與人員 于如陵李再長郭晉魁王建仁曾昭雄鄭玲兒
洪莉雯陳國泰
成果報告類型(依經費核定清單規定繳交)精簡報告完整報告
本成果報告包括以下應繳交之附件
赴國外出差或研習心得報告一份
赴大陸地區出差或研習心得報告一份
出席國際學術會議心得報告及發表之論文各一份
國際合作研究計畫國外研究報告書一份
處理方式除產學合作研究計畫提升產業技術及人才培育研究計畫列管計
畫及下列情形者外得立即公開查詢
涉及專利或其他智慧財產權一年二年後可公開查詢
執行單位崑山科技大學 電腦與通訊系
中 華 民 國 98 年 8 月 27 日
2
以 U 化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現(13) ldquoThe Design and Implementation of the Smart House Based
on the Ubiquitous Kitchenrdquo
計畫編號NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001 執行期間97 年 11 月 1 日 至 98 年 10 月 31 日
主持人盧春林 崑山科技大學電腦通訊系教授
摘要 關鍵詞智慧優質住宅廚房
本計畫預計以三年的時間實現「以 U 化
廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計」共包括一個
總計畫與分為七個子計畫總計畫與各子計畫
的名稱分別是(a)總計畫以 U 化廚房為中心
之優質住宅的設計與實現(b)子計畫一智慧
化廚房的使用者需求心理知覺與滿意度分析
--以使用者為中心的互動設計回饋之研究(c)
子計畫二RFID 智慧型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統
之研製(d)子計畫三智慧感知之互動家庭環
境控制系統的研製(e)子計畫四智慧型健康
餐桌椅的設計與實現(f)子計畫五網路訊息
整合中心的研製(g)子計畫六射頻天線與收
發機系統的設計與實現(7)子計畫七智慧型
營養與食物管理平台
本計畫為三年期計畫目前進行到第一年
的前半年主要成果是子計畫一完成使用者需
求調查得到幾個重結論可供其他子計畫研究
的參考其他子計畫除了完成大部分設備採購
之外研究工作也都按照計畫書的預期進度進
行
Abstract Keywords house intelligent kitchen
ubiquitous u-kitchen
This is a three years project The project
includes one main project and seven
sub-projects The titles of them are listed as the
follows
(a) Main project The design and
implementation of the smart house based on the
ubiquitous kitchen (U-kitchen) (b) Sub-project
1 The study of user demand and accepted
degree for U-kitchen (c) Sub-project 2 The
implementation of a smart refrigerator and a
cupboard based on RFID with video and audio
processing (d) Sub project 3 The
implementation of the control system for an
interactive home environment with smart
perception (e) Sub-project 4 The design and
implementation of a smart dinner table and
chairs with health promotion (f) Sub-project 5
The implementation of the network message
integrating center (g) Sub-project 6 The
design and implementation of the antennas and
transceivers for the RF applications (h)
Sub-project 7 The implementation of the smart
platform for the management of the nutrition of
food
This report describes the achievements of
the first half year of the project The main
contribution of the first half year comes from
Sub-project 1 which reports the demands of the
possible users of the smart house with the
investigation topics focused on U-kitchen The
rest Sub-projects are all on schedule in the
equipment installation and the researching
3
一計畫的緣由與目的
何謂前瞻優質生活環境科技讓我們先
看看下列情境
不必打開冰箱就可以知道冰箱有什麼使
用 RFID 作為冰箱內物品規格與數量的感
測並經由有線或無線網路連接到外部電
腦使用者不必打開冰箱就可以知道冰
箱內有什麼物品
主動提醒物品即將到期電腦可以將物品
的使用期限和電腦本身的日期做比對
對於使用期限即將到達的物品當使用者
操作冰箱時電腦會主動發出提醒信號
幫忙網購冰箱的電腦會以物品名稱為關
鍵字主動連上購物網站將相關訊息顯
示出來不必鍵盤操作只需要簡單的點
選冰箱就可以幫忙訂購物品
參考食譜藉由觸控螢幕的點選使用者
可以輕鬆的找到食物的參考烹飪方法或
者是提供多種食譜以供選擇
遙控操作冰箱既然可以連上網路必然
可以由遠端使用電腦或手機連接察看冰
箱現有內容作為購物的參考
影音信息平台藉由 RFID 讀取系統冰
箱的顯示器也可以作為 RFID 廣告單或者
是 RFID 卡片的影音顯示平台豐富數位
生活的內容
影像電話藉由網路電話的功能人在廚
房工作一樣可以使用視訊電話與人溝
通
遠方親友虛擬聚餐冰箱通常擺放在餐廳
附近藉由冰箱影音系統的連接以作為
虛擬窗戶的功能就可以讓分隔兩地的兩
個家庭共進晚餐尤其是透過遠端互動操
作網路攝影機可以讓虛擬聚餐變得更為
真實兩家人虛擬聚餐就像在窗戶的兩
邊將有助於親情與友情的提升
家庭安全監控系統的人機介面藉由網路
的連接家庭安全監控系統的狀態一目了
然而藉由冰箱影音人機介面的操作人
在廚房工作一樣可以看到門口訪客的影
像一樣可以決定要不要開門既安全又
不會錯過好友的到訪
情境燈光系統的顯示與控制數位及生活
的燈光系統不但要省能還要具有智慧
不但可以在任何房間知道其他房間的燈
光狀態也可以進一步手動打開或關閉其
他房間的燈光以達到省能的目的還可
以根據使用者的喜好自動開燈關燈
甚至變化燈光亮度或者是顏色而這些模
式的操作或狀態顯示等等資訊透過影音
冰箱的顯示屏幕人在廚房照樣清清楚
楚
顯示用電量藉由即時與平均用電量的顯
示提醒使用者盡量減少冰箱門的開關次
數已達到節能的目的
人性化的操作介面在影音冰箱具備如此
多樣功能之後如何讓使用者可以輕易操
作尤其家中不會使用電腦的長者可以輕
易學會使用變成是整個成果的關鍵技
術另一方面好的產品一定需要包裝
漂亮的東西使用者才會喜歡研發成果才
會具有價值此時設計背景的專家就會
發揮最大功效
餐廳情境控制系統用餐時影音顯示螢
幕將會播放宜人圖畫及悅耳音樂也會
配合使用者的穿著變化影音內容甚至調
整燈光系統讓用餐變成是奢侈的享受
讓心情盡量放鬆
餐廳座椅具備簡易健康檢測系統用餐時
順便做個簡單的體重體溫檢測還可以
4
提醒用餐注意事項用餐不單是享受愉快
的氣氛還可以順便做個健康檢查另
外對於孩童使用者還可以自動調整椅
子的高度
由於優質家庭生活科技的目標是在於改
善人類的生活因此全世界莫不積極投入
例如麻省理工學院(MIT)喬治亞科技學院
(Georgia Institute of Technology)以及科羅
拉多大學(University of Colorado)等名校
不但早就積極投入而且也已經有了具體的成
果國內方面鄰近的國立成功大學也早在幾
年前就投入研究例如成功大學電機系與華新
麗華集團合作成立的「數位生活科技研究中
心」(CREDITCenter for Research of E-life
DIgital Technology)就已經投入數位生活科技
方面的研究許多年也已經有許多具體成果
[10]另外成大奇美大樓已經落成其一樓
也擴充為「成大優質生活體驗屋」積極投入
數位生活科技的研究[8]還有交通大學資工系
的 iMouseECO-House[9]文化大學的智慧
建築模擬實驗室等[12]
國科會最近為了推展「科文共裕」分別
在北中南各設一個智慧家庭科技創新與整合
中心也就是台大的 Insight center[13]交大
的 Eco-city center[14]以及成大的 Touch
center[15]等三個區域整合中心而鄰近國家比
較有名的有 Panasonic 的 The house of the
Future[16]以及韓國的 u-Home[17]等由上
述說明不難看出數位生活科技的重要性與發
展的迫切性
本計畫的目的是研究與開發「前瞻優質
生活環境科技」而以無所不在或稱為 U 化
(Ubiquiteous)的服務為訴求將 U 化技術實
現在日常生活關係最密切的生活環境--廚房與
餐廳之中並將對廚房 U 化之需求技術實
現使用評估與回饋等做一系列的研究與開
發首先根據不動產經營專家的經驗目前
住宅的發展趨勢可以歸納出下列幾點
現代化住宅設備日新月異光是大投資購
置豪華設備已經不符市場需求必須進一
步提升為智慧化才能重新贏得消費者的
青睞
現代女性為家庭生活中心居家時間最
長尊重女性的設計將是未來住宅設計的
主流趨勢
廚房與餐廳為家庭中全家人每天必須使
用到的環境特別是對於老人與小孩而
言提供友善安全舒適方便與健
康的環境是極為重要的
現代科技都朝向節能與環保的方向在努
力因此智慧型廚房也必須結合節能環保
的設計理念
內政部建研所長丁育群曾經表示「預估
到公元 2015 年全球數位化居住空間所衍生
之相關產業將達 1000 億美元之產值高度數
位化的智慧居住生活系統將成為居住生活設
施中最重要的一環」內政部建築研究所「智
慧建築標章」審查委員會召集人中國文化大
學溫琇玲教授更對「智慧化居住空間」做進一
步說明所謂智慧化居住空間絕對不只是將
建築予與資訊化網路化與自動化而已必須
是透過資訊基礎建設結合電子電機資通
訊相關產業技術與自動化設備建構智慧化居
住空間創造及享有安全健康便利舒適
與永續經營的生活形態
這裡所謂的「智慧居住生活系統」或者
是「智慧化居住空間」又叫做「優質家庭生
活」(U-Home ubiquitous home life)是利
用無所不在(ubiquitous)的服務技術來創造未
來生活環境的新模式讓未來的生活能夠與家
人分享更多的時間同時又能提升工作的愉
快在溫和方便的無所不在之社會世界都
是親密的鄰居
另一方面廚房與餐廳不但是家中女主人
5
的主要活動區域也是家中不分老少每天都必
須使用的場所尤其是目前的住宅買賣市場
常常是由女主人決定而女主人最在意的當然
是廚房與餐廳的方便性與舒適性因此本計
畫的願景在於使用有線及無線通訊技術例如
網際網路RFID以及 ZigBee 等將其應用
並實現在未來優質家庭生活所需的各項技術
裡面尤其是使用在廚房與餐廳的各項產品與
技術讓家中的女主人享受無所不在的智慧
具體減輕女主人的工作壓力讓優質智慧家庭
的科技得以真正發揮功效
於是本團隊決定將專題的研究目標鎖定
在廚房的 U 化方面換句話說家庭成員只要
在廚房或餐廳裡面就可以擁有無所不在的服
務而可以克服空間的限制例如可以在廚
房操控其他房間的電燈而不必走到其他房間
去關燈再如可以在廚房打影像電話而不必走
到客廳或書房的電腦前面又如可以在餐廳直
接和門口的訪客對話並操作大門的開與關而
不必走到大門另如可以在餐桌觀看新聞打
互動遊戲等等都是所謂「無所不在的服務」
本整合型計畫的總體目標在於結合「科技
類」「商業類」「藝術類」以及「健康
類」等各種不同專長領域的研究團隊分工合
作來研究跨領域優質生活環境相關技術希望
藉由商業類的需求分析與滿意度回饋的專
長來確保研究開發的產品可以真正符合消費
者的需求也就是讓產品開發的程序是先有需
求再尋找可用技術而有別於習見之純技術
研究等技術開發出來之後再勉強找應用配
對的窘境至於產品開發之時不但有藝術專
長的團隊幫忙修飾產品的外觀提升產品的附
加價值更有工業設計專長的團隊幫忙考量人
體工學讓研究成果更為實用而安全健康
與舒適既是團隊的最終目標則健康相關的食
品營養團隊當然不能缺席
二研究方法
本計畫預計以三年的時間實現「以 U 化
廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計」並且將具體
的工作內容分為七個子計畫如圖 1 所示總
計畫與各子計畫的名稱分別是
總計畫以 U 化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計
與實現
子計畫一(商管團隊)智慧化廚房的使用者
需求心理知覺與滿意度分析--以使用者為
中心的互動設計回饋之研究
子計畫二(RFID 技術與應用)RFID 智慧
型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
子計畫三(感測與控制團隊)智慧感知之互
動家庭環境控制系統的研製
子計畫四(科技與藝術團隊)智慧型健康餐
桌椅的設計與實現
子計畫五(網路團隊)網路訊息整合中心的
研製
子計畫六(射頻技術與應用)射頻天線與收
發機系統的設計與實現
子計畫七(營養與健康團隊)智慧型營養與
食物管理平台
本團隊經過初步的需求分析(子計畫
一)先將廚房 U 化的標的物選擇在 RFID 冰
箱(子計畫二)感知與互動控制功能(子計
畫三)以及智慧健康餐桌椅(子計畫四)等
三大方向而為了達成上述功能網路與資料
庫(子計畫五)以及射頻天線與收發機(子
計畫六)將是不可或缺的基礎建設尤其是如
何設計指向性天線以及天線應該如何配置
才能讓無線網路如 ZigBeeRFID甚至 WiFi
等既暢通又盡量降低對人體造成傷害是非常
重要的課題又因為冰箱餐桌椅和食物息息
相關而食物又對健康影響甚巨因此食品
營養與健康參數的量測(子計畫七)是整個團
隊不可或缺的一員
6
RFID智慧型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧感知之互動家庭環境控制系統的研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧型健康餐桌椅的設計與實現
視訊傳播系電腦與通訊系
總計畫 以U化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現
智慧化廚房的使用者需求心理知覺與滿意度分析
不動產經營系企業管理系
子計畫一
子計畫二 子計畫三 子計畫四
射頻天線與收發機系統的設計與實現
電腦與通訊系
子計畫六
網路訊息整合中心的研製
電腦與通訊系
子計畫五
智慧型營養與食物管理平台
崑山資科院成大醫院
子計畫七
圖 1總計畫與子計畫的關連圖
另外為了能夠在有限人力下發揮最大效
用子計畫一也幫團隊收集並規劃出一些廚
房常見的器具或功能並且將這些功能分為
基本機能豪華功能以及 U 化功能等三個
等級如表一所示以便其他子計畫能朝正
確方向發展這個表格的內容雖然不完整
不過卻能夠讓團隊的其他子計畫找到具體的
研究方向
表一廚房功能的分類
基本機能 所需設備 豪華功
能
U 化功
能 1 烹飪
炒鍋平
鍋湯鍋
壓力鍋
悶燒鍋
電鍋
微波爐
烤箱
爐台
料理台
調味料架
切具鉆
板
除油煙機
預約煮
飯功能
選擇
自動斷
電安全
裝置
節能爐
頭熄火
安全裝
置
旋轉式
吸力
連線控
制啟動
煮飯
計算卡
路里
依油煙
大小切
換吸力
強靜音
馬達過
熱保護
裝置 2 用餐
餐桌
餐椅
兒童餐椅
可摺疊
或延伸
人體工
學
可調整
高度
量體重
3 喝飲
料
飲水機
咖啡壺
濾水器
自動加
熱無水
斷電
自動煮
咖啡機
定期更
換濾心
顯示
4 清潔 洗槽
吸塵器 除塵洗
地機器
人
5 溝通
聊天
舒適
吧台
吧台椅
冷氣
預約開
關
留言記
事家事
管理
恆溫 6 收納 烘碗機
櫥櫃
碗櫃
電器櫃
洗乾
儲藏一
體
防火材
質關門
緩衝無
接縫防
蟲鋼琴
烤漆可
調高度
腳
迴路插
7
座 7 儲藏 冰箱
垃圾桶
廚餘桶
資源回收
筒
變頻恆
溫抑菌
感應開
啟
密閉鐵
胃堆肥
製造
庫存管
理訂貨
根據前面的參考文獻以及對照表一整
理的資料團隊決定將冰箱虛擬互動窗戶
無線燈光控制系統餐桌椅等予與 U 化分
別由子計畫二三四來研製這裡所謂的
U 化是將功能提升到「無所不在的服務」
例如餐桌上可以看到冰箱的資訊再如
餐桌上可以觀看房子內所有電燈的開關狀
態當然也可以由餐桌直接關閉電燈讓
隨手關燈變得更容易就算一時忘記也可
以很容易補救真正達到省能的目標而既
然是無所不在的服務餐桌上有的功能冰
箱上樣樣不能少因此大量的資訊將在網
路線上流動也因此需要一個子計畫專門幫
團隊開發與管理網路這就是子計畫五mdash網
路信息整合中心
由於無線網路系統在家庭的應用有日漸
普及的趨勢其中又以 ZigBee 最被看好而
既然是無線傳輸天線的設計就變得非常重
要天線做得好就有可能在不影響信號品
質的情況下將打到人體的電磁波盡量降
低讓無線網路的使用變得更健康子計畫
六的工作就是要設計並實現團隊所需的天
線只是電腦與通訊系或者說崑山科技
大學目前尚缺電磁波的無反射室對於天線
設計而言還是有些不方便其會影響到設計
天線的效率因此總計畫預定在第二年購
置電磁波的無反射室
三期中進度
專家說過想要工程師設計出可用的產
品必須先給他環境去體驗為了讓本研究
團隊創造出亮麗的成果本計畫取得本校「優
質家庭生活科技(u-Home)之關鍵技術特色發
展計畫」研究團隊的同意將本計畫研發所
需的基礎建設進駐到 u-Home 裡面如圖 2所
示為本校 u-Home 現在的客廳與廚房未來將
會配合本計畫的研究將客廳和廚房予與整
合也就是將兩者的地板改裝成同一水平
並且採用智慧建築觀念讓地板成為模組
化以利研究團隊架設與改變管線以及變
化餐桌椅與灶台之配置等等
圖 2崑山科技大學 u-Home 之客廳與廚房
本計畫共包含七個子計畫其中子計畫一
為本計畫的先鋒部隊負責研究與調查使用
者之需求以提供正確的研究方向給其他子
計畫參考是本期(計畫一開始的前半年)計
畫最重要的成果今將子計畫一的研究結果
說明如下
31 使用者需求分析(子計畫一期中成果)
本研究主要是根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
8
本中進行重要與需求程度分析並藉由圖 3
至 圖7之散佈圖區分不同平均得分屬性的相
對位置進一步提出實用的建議與特定功能
屬性的策略應用
圖 3 安全功能之散佈圖
由上圖 3可發現
1 用電過載警示瓦斯安全孩童靠近
熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒童安全設計瓦斯爐
具設定時裝置熄火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
其優先性最低設計者可以先不要放入太多
心力與資源
圖 4 健康功能之散佈圖
由上圖 4可發現
1 透過電腦營養系統依照不同狀況與
疾病提供餐飲建議家中老年人可使用事件
備忘系統等功能落於第一象限代表這些功
能是填答者認為既重要又有需求的可做為
設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱溫度
異常落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能
是需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有
未來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行
銷喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市
場
3 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
較不具優先性
圖 5 節能功能之散佈圖
由上圖 5可發現
1 透過電腦或手機監視家中資訊家電
狀況透過網路打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱門
未關緊透過電腦顯示廚房使用電量等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 在任何房間內可以操控其他房間或
走道上之電燈功能落於第四象限代表填答
者認為此功能是需求程度高但重要程度低
的此功能具有未來發展的決定性關鍵因
素將來可以以行銷喚起消費者的重視獲
取更多的消費者市場
3 出門在外可以透過網路操控家中燈
光系統透過電腦或手機控制各房間的溫度
9
及亮度等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者
認為重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可
將其列為較不重要的設計項目
圖 6 便利功能之散佈圖
由上圖 6可發現
1 廚房中互動螢幕可直接撥出與接聽
電話廚房中互動螢幕可與門口外面的人做
影像通訊與開門的動作等功能落於第一象
限代表這些功能是填答者認為既重要又有
需求的可做為設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過互動螢幕可以手寫方式快速留
言落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能是
需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有未
來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行銷
喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市場
3 透過電腦或手機查詢冰箱及櫥櫃之
食品數量與保存期限透過互動系統與遠方
之家人共進晚餐和聊天等功能落於第三象
限這些是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低
之功能設計者可將其列為較不重要的設計
項目
圖 7 舒適功能之散佈圖
由上圖 7可發現
1 餐椅可自動歸位讓使用者方便整理
與餐椅可識別使用者身分調整到舒適坐姿兩
功能落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者
認為既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計
之重要參考
2 透過餐桌自動顯示使用者的電子郵
件與行事曆智慧桌具有休閒娛樂的功能
智慧桌具有自動排版功能智慧桌具有互動
的功能易與遠方作資訊交換或玩互動式遊
戲等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者認為
重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可依序
參考其優先性作為規劃設計的參考
32 其他子計畫之期中成果
根據子計畫一之研究結果其餘各子計畫
之期中進度可以簡要說明如下
(1) 子計畫二之期中成果
子計畫二目前已經完成的工作如下
RFID 系統設備的選型與測試
冰箱與櫥櫃內部 RFID 天線的設計與佈
署
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之嵌入式系統的建
立
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之觸控式面板的建
立
(2) 子計畫三之期中成果
本子計畫分為互動魔法窗廚房安全以
及行為分析等三個研究方向其中使用超音
波感測觀察者位置並且操作遠端 IPcam 的部
份已經完成雛形並且已經撰寫成論文而被
INCN09 國際研討會接受
用電安全方面目前已經完成插座使用電
量偵測電路可以監控到 1500 W 的用電量
並且可以在用電過載時發出警報甚至切斷
插座電源
行為分析方面目前已完成由監視攝影機
影像追蹤廚房中人員使用者不需穿戴任
何感應裝置
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助專題研究計畫 成 果 報 告 期中進度報告
以 U化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現(13)
計畫類別 個別型計畫 整合型計畫
計畫編號NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
執行期間 97 年 11 月 1 日至 98 年 10 月 31 日
計畫主持人盧春林
共同主持人陳淑美郭崇仁曾昭雄劉崇汎蔡崇洲鄭國順
計畫參與人員 于如陵李再長郭晉魁王建仁曾昭雄鄭玲兒
洪莉雯陳國泰
成果報告類型(依經費核定清單規定繳交)精簡報告完整報告
本成果報告包括以下應繳交之附件
赴國外出差或研習心得報告一份
赴大陸地區出差或研習心得報告一份
出席國際學術會議心得報告及發表之論文各一份
國際合作研究計畫國外研究報告書一份
處理方式除產學合作研究計畫提升產業技術及人才培育研究計畫列管計
畫及下列情形者外得立即公開查詢
涉及專利或其他智慧財產權一年二年後可公開查詢
執行單位崑山科技大學 電腦與通訊系
中 華 民 國 98 年 8 月 27 日
2
以 U 化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現(13) ldquoThe Design and Implementation of the Smart House Based
on the Ubiquitous Kitchenrdquo
計畫編號NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001 執行期間97 年 11 月 1 日 至 98 年 10 月 31 日
主持人盧春林 崑山科技大學電腦通訊系教授
摘要 關鍵詞智慧優質住宅廚房
本計畫預計以三年的時間實現「以 U 化
廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計」共包括一個
總計畫與分為七個子計畫總計畫與各子計畫
的名稱分別是(a)總計畫以 U 化廚房為中心
之優質住宅的設計與實現(b)子計畫一智慧
化廚房的使用者需求心理知覺與滿意度分析
--以使用者為中心的互動設計回饋之研究(c)
子計畫二RFID 智慧型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統
之研製(d)子計畫三智慧感知之互動家庭環
境控制系統的研製(e)子計畫四智慧型健康
餐桌椅的設計與實現(f)子計畫五網路訊息
整合中心的研製(g)子計畫六射頻天線與收
發機系統的設計與實現(7)子計畫七智慧型
營養與食物管理平台
本計畫為三年期計畫目前進行到第一年
的前半年主要成果是子計畫一完成使用者需
求調查得到幾個重結論可供其他子計畫研究
的參考其他子計畫除了完成大部分設備採購
之外研究工作也都按照計畫書的預期進度進
行
Abstract Keywords house intelligent kitchen
ubiquitous u-kitchen
This is a three years project The project
includes one main project and seven
sub-projects The titles of them are listed as the
follows
(a) Main project The design and
implementation of the smart house based on the
ubiquitous kitchen (U-kitchen) (b) Sub-project
1 The study of user demand and accepted
degree for U-kitchen (c) Sub-project 2 The
implementation of a smart refrigerator and a
cupboard based on RFID with video and audio
processing (d) Sub project 3 The
implementation of the control system for an
interactive home environment with smart
perception (e) Sub-project 4 The design and
implementation of a smart dinner table and
chairs with health promotion (f) Sub-project 5
The implementation of the network message
integrating center (g) Sub-project 6 The
design and implementation of the antennas and
transceivers for the RF applications (h)
Sub-project 7 The implementation of the smart
platform for the management of the nutrition of
food
This report describes the achievements of
the first half year of the project The main
contribution of the first half year comes from
Sub-project 1 which reports the demands of the
possible users of the smart house with the
investigation topics focused on U-kitchen The
rest Sub-projects are all on schedule in the
equipment installation and the researching
3
一計畫的緣由與目的
何謂前瞻優質生活環境科技讓我們先
看看下列情境
不必打開冰箱就可以知道冰箱有什麼使
用 RFID 作為冰箱內物品規格與數量的感
測並經由有線或無線網路連接到外部電
腦使用者不必打開冰箱就可以知道冰
箱內有什麼物品
主動提醒物品即將到期電腦可以將物品
的使用期限和電腦本身的日期做比對
對於使用期限即將到達的物品當使用者
操作冰箱時電腦會主動發出提醒信號
幫忙網購冰箱的電腦會以物品名稱為關
鍵字主動連上購物網站將相關訊息顯
示出來不必鍵盤操作只需要簡單的點
選冰箱就可以幫忙訂購物品
參考食譜藉由觸控螢幕的點選使用者
可以輕鬆的找到食物的參考烹飪方法或
者是提供多種食譜以供選擇
遙控操作冰箱既然可以連上網路必然
可以由遠端使用電腦或手機連接察看冰
箱現有內容作為購物的參考
影音信息平台藉由 RFID 讀取系統冰
箱的顯示器也可以作為 RFID 廣告單或者
是 RFID 卡片的影音顯示平台豐富數位
生活的內容
影像電話藉由網路電話的功能人在廚
房工作一樣可以使用視訊電話與人溝
通
遠方親友虛擬聚餐冰箱通常擺放在餐廳
附近藉由冰箱影音系統的連接以作為
虛擬窗戶的功能就可以讓分隔兩地的兩
個家庭共進晚餐尤其是透過遠端互動操
作網路攝影機可以讓虛擬聚餐變得更為
真實兩家人虛擬聚餐就像在窗戶的兩
邊將有助於親情與友情的提升
家庭安全監控系統的人機介面藉由網路
的連接家庭安全監控系統的狀態一目了
然而藉由冰箱影音人機介面的操作人
在廚房工作一樣可以看到門口訪客的影
像一樣可以決定要不要開門既安全又
不會錯過好友的到訪
情境燈光系統的顯示與控制數位及生活
的燈光系統不但要省能還要具有智慧
不但可以在任何房間知道其他房間的燈
光狀態也可以進一步手動打開或關閉其
他房間的燈光以達到省能的目的還可
以根據使用者的喜好自動開燈關燈
甚至變化燈光亮度或者是顏色而這些模
式的操作或狀態顯示等等資訊透過影音
冰箱的顯示屏幕人在廚房照樣清清楚
楚
顯示用電量藉由即時與平均用電量的顯
示提醒使用者盡量減少冰箱門的開關次
數已達到節能的目的
人性化的操作介面在影音冰箱具備如此
多樣功能之後如何讓使用者可以輕易操
作尤其家中不會使用電腦的長者可以輕
易學會使用變成是整個成果的關鍵技
術另一方面好的產品一定需要包裝
漂亮的東西使用者才會喜歡研發成果才
會具有價值此時設計背景的專家就會
發揮最大功效
餐廳情境控制系統用餐時影音顯示螢
幕將會播放宜人圖畫及悅耳音樂也會
配合使用者的穿著變化影音內容甚至調
整燈光系統讓用餐變成是奢侈的享受
讓心情盡量放鬆
餐廳座椅具備簡易健康檢測系統用餐時
順便做個簡單的體重體溫檢測還可以
4
提醒用餐注意事項用餐不單是享受愉快
的氣氛還可以順便做個健康檢查另
外對於孩童使用者還可以自動調整椅
子的高度
由於優質家庭生活科技的目標是在於改
善人類的生活因此全世界莫不積極投入
例如麻省理工學院(MIT)喬治亞科技學院
(Georgia Institute of Technology)以及科羅
拉多大學(University of Colorado)等名校
不但早就積極投入而且也已經有了具體的成
果國內方面鄰近的國立成功大學也早在幾
年前就投入研究例如成功大學電機系與華新
麗華集團合作成立的「數位生活科技研究中
心」(CREDITCenter for Research of E-life
DIgital Technology)就已經投入數位生活科技
方面的研究許多年也已經有許多具體成果
[10]另外成大奇美大樓已經落成其一樓
也擴充為「成大優質生活體驗屋」積極投入
數位生活科技的研究[8]還有交通大學資工系
的 iMouseECO-House[9]文化大學的智慧
建築模擬實驗室等[12]
國科會最近為了推展「科文共裕」分別
在北中南各設一個智慧家庭科技創新與整合
中心也就是台大的 Insight center[13]交大
的 Eco-city center[14]以及成大的 Touch
center[15]等三個區域整合中心而鄰近國家比
較有名的有 Panasonic 的 The house of the
Future[16]以及韓國的 u-Home[17]等由上
述說明不難看出數位生活科技的重要性與發
展的迫切性
本計畫的目的是研究與開發「前瞻優質
生活環境科技」而以無所不在或稱為 U 化
(Ubiquiteous)的服務為訴求將 U 化技術實
現在日常生活關係最密切的生活環境--廚房與
餐廳之中並將對廚房 U 化之需求技術實
現使用評估與回饋等做一系列的研究與開
發首先根據不動產經營專家的經驗目前
住宅的發展趨勢可以歸納出下列幾點
現代化住宅設備日新月異光是大投資購
置豪華設備已經不符市場需求必須進一
步提升為智慧化才能重新贏得消費者的
青睞
現代女性為家庭生活中心居家時間最
長尊重女性的設計將是未來住宅設計的
主流趨勢
廚房與餐廳為家庭中全家人每天必須使
用到的環境特別是對於老人與小孩而
言提供友善安全舒適方便與健
康的環境是極為重要的
現代科技都朝向節能與環保的方向在努
力因此智慧型廚房也必須結合節能環保
的設計理念
內政部建研所長丁育群曾經表示「預估
到公元 2015 年全球數位化居住空間所衍生
之相關產業將達 1000 億美元之產值高度數
位化的智慧居住生活系統將成為居住生活設
施中最重要的一環」內政部建築研究所「智
慧建築標章」審查委員會召集人中國文化大
學溫琇玲教授更對「智慧化居住空間」做進一
步說明所謂智慧化居住空間絕對不只是將
建築予與資訊化網路化與自動化而已必須
是透過資訊基礎建設結合電子電機資通
訊相關產業技術與自動化設備建構智慧化居
住空間創造及享有安全健康便利舒適
與永續經營的生活形態
這裡所謂的「智慧居住生活系統」或者
是「智慧化居住空間」又叫做「優質家庭生
活」(U-Home ubiquitous home life)是利
用無所不在(ubiquitous)的服務技術來創造未
來生活環境的新模式讓未來的生活能夠與家
人分享更多的時間同時又能提升工作的愉
快在溫和方便的無所不在之社會世界都
是親密的鄰居
另一方面廚房與餐廳不但是家中女主人
5
的主要活動區域也是家中不分老少每天都必
須使用的場所尤其是目前的住宅買賣市場
常常是由女主人決定而女主人最在意的當然
是廚房與餐廳的方便性與舒適性因此本計
畫的願景在於使用有線及無線通訊技術例如
網際網路RFID以及 ZigBee 等將其應用
並實現在未來優質家庭生活所需的各項技術
裡面尤其是使用在廚房與餐廳的各項產品與
技術讓家中的女主人享受無所不在的智慧
具體減輕女主人的工作壓力讓優質智慧家庭
的科技得以真正發揮功效
於是本團隊決定將專題的研究目標鎖定
在廚房的 U 化方面換句話說家庭成員只要
在廚房或餐廳裡面就可以擁有無所不在的服
務而可以克服空間的限制例如可以在廚
房操控其他房間的電燈而不必走到其他房間
去關燈再如可以在廚房打影像電話而不必走
到客廳或書房的電腦前面又如可以在餐廳直
接和門口的訪客對話並操作大門的開與關而
不必走到大門另如可以在餐桌觀看新聞打
互動遊戲等等都是所謂「無所不在的服務」
本整合型計畫的總體目標在於結合「科技
類」「商業類」「藝術類」以及「健康
類」等各種不同專長領域的研究團隊分工合
作來研究跨領域優質生活環境相關技術希望
藉由商業類的需求分析與滿意度回饋的專
長來確保研究開發的產品可以真正符合消費
者的需求也就是讓產品開發的程序是先有需
求再尋找可用技術而有別於習見之純技術
研究等技術開發出來之後再勉強找應用配
對的窘境至於產品開發之時不但有藝術專
長的團隊幫忙修飾產品的外觀提升產品的附
加價值更有工業設計專長的團隊幫忙考量人
體工學讓研究成果更為實用而安全健康
與舒適既是團隊的最終目標則健康相關的食
品營養團隊當然不能缺席
二研究方法
本計畫預計以三年的時間實現「以 U 化
廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計」並且將具體
的工作內容分為七個子計畫如圖 1 所示總
計畫與各子計畫的名稱分別是
總計畫以 U 化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計
與實現
子計畫一(商管團隊)智慧化廚房的使用者
需求心理知覺與滿意度分析--以使用者為
中心的互動設計回饋之研究
子計畫二(RFID 技術與應用)RFID 智慧
型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
子計畫三(感測與控制團隊)智慧感知之互
動家庭環境控制系統的研製
子計畫四(科技與藝術團隊)智慧型健康餐
桌椅的設計與實現
子計畫五(網路團隊)網路訊息整合中心的
研製
子計畫六(射頻技術與應用)射頻天線與收
發機系統的設計與實現
子計畫七(營養與健康團隊)智慧型營養與
食物管理平台
本團隊經過初步的需求分析(子計畫
一)先將廚房 U 化的標的物選擇在 RFID 冰
箱(子計畫二)感知與互動控制功能(子計
畫三)以及智慧健康餐桌椅(子計畫四)等
三大方向而為了達成上述功能網路與資料
庫(子計畫五)以及射頻天線與收發機(子
計畫六)將是不可或缺的基礎建設尤其是如
何設計指向性天線以及天線應該如何配置
才能讓無線網路如 ZigBeeRFID甚至 WiFi
等既暢通又盡量降低對人體造成傷害是非常
重要的課題又因為冰箱餐桌椅和食物息息
相關而食物又對健康影響甚巨因此食品
營養與健康參數的量測(子計畫七)是整個團
隊不可或缺的一員
6
RFID智慧型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧感知之互動家庭環境控制系統的研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧型健康餐桌椅的設計與實現
視訊傳播系電腦與通訊系
總計畫 以U化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現
智慧化廚房的使用者需求心理知覺與滿意度分析
不動產經營系企業管理系
子計畫一
子計畫二 子計畫三 子計畫四
射頻天線與收發機系統的設計與實現
電腦與通訊系
子計畫六
網路訊息整合中心的研製
電腦與通訊系
子計畫五
智慧型營養與食物管理平台
崑山資科院成大醫院
子計畫七
圖 1總計畫與子計畫的關連圖
另外為了能夠在有限人力下發揮最大效
用子計畫一也幫團隊收集並規劃出一些廚
房常見的器具或功能並且將這些功能分為
基本機能豪華功能以及 U 化功能等三個
等級如表一所示以便其他子計畫能朝正
確方向發展這個表格的內容雖然不完整
不過卻能夠讓團隊的其他子計畫找到具體的
研究方向
表一廚房功能的分類
基本機能 所需設備 豪華功
能
U 化功
能 1 烹飪
炒鍋平
鍋湯鍋
壓力鍋
悶燒鍋
電鍋
微波爐
烤箱
爐台
料理台
調味料架
切具鉆
板
除油煙機
預約煮
飯功能
選擇
自動斷
電安全
裝置
節能爐
頭熄火
安全裝
置
旋轉式
吸力
連線控
制啟動
煮飯
計算卡
路里
依油煙
大小切
換吸力
強靜音
馬達過
熱保護
裝置 2 用餐
餐桌
餐椅
兒童餐椅
可摺疊
或延伸
人體工
學
可調整
高度
量體重
3 喝飲
料
飲水機
咖啡壺
濾水器
自動加
熱無水
斷電
自動煮
咖啡機
定期更
換濾心
顯示
4 清潔 洗槽
吸塵器 除塵洗
地機器
人
5 溝通
聊天
舒適
吧台
吧台椅
冷氣
預約開
關
留言記
事家事
管理
恆溫 6 收納 烘碗機
櫥櫃
碗櫃
電器櫃
洗乾
儲藏一
體
防火材
質關門
緩衝無
接縫防
蟲鋼琴
烤漆可
調高度
腳
迴路插
7
座 7 儲藏 冰箱
垃圾桶
廚餘桶
資源回收
筒
變頻恆
溫抑菌
感應開
啟
密閉鐵
胃堆肥
製造
庫存管
理訂貨
根據前面的參考文獻以及對照表一整
理的資料團隊決定將冰箱虛擬互動窗戶
無線燈光控制系統餐桌椅等予與 U 化分
別由子計畫二三四來研製這裡所謂的
U 化是將功能提升到「無所不在的服務」
例如餐桌上可以看到冰箱的資訊再如
餐桌上可以觀看房子內所有電燈的開關狀
態當然也可以由餐桌直接關閉電燈讓
隨手關燈變得更容易就算一時忘記也可
以很容易補救真正達到省能的目標而既
然是無所不在的服務餐桌上有的功能冰
箱上樣樣不能少因此大量的資訊將在網
路線上流動也因此需要一個子計畫專門幫
團隊開發與管理網路這就是子計畫五mdash網
路信息整合中心
由於無線網路系統在家庭的應用有日漸
普及的趨勢其中又以 ZigBee 最被看好而
既然是無線傳輸天線的設計就變得非常重
要天線做得好就有可能在不影響信號品
質的情況下將打到人體的電磁波盡量降
低讓無線網路的使用變得更健康子計畫
六的工作就是要設計並實現團隊所需的天
線只是電腦與通訊系或者說崑山科技
大學目前尚缺電磁波的無反射室對於天線
設計而言還是有些不方便其會影響到設計
天線的效率因此總計畫預定在第二年購
置電磁波的無反射室
三期中進度
專家說過想要工程師設計出可用的產
品必須先給他環境去體驗為了讓本研究
團隊創造出亮麗的成果本計畫取得本校「優
質家庭生活科技(u-Home)之關鍵技術特色發
展計畫」研究團隊的同意將本計畫研發所
需的基礎建設進駐到 u-Home 裡面如圖 2所
示為本校 u-Home 現在的客廳與廚房未來將
會配合本計畫的研究將客廳和廚房予與整
合也就是將兩者的地板改裝成同一水平
並且採用智慧建築觀念讓地板成為模組
化以利研究團隊架設與改變管線以及變
化餐桌椅與灶台之配置等等
圖 2崑山科技大學 u-Home 之客廳與廚房
本計畫共包含七個子計畫其中子計畫一
為本計畫的先鋒部隊負責研究與調查使用
者之需求以提供正確的研究方向給其他子
計畫參考是本期(計畫一開始的前半年)計
畫最重要的成果今將子計畫一的研究結果
說明如下
31 使用者需求分析(子計畫一期中成果)
本研究主要是根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
8
本中進行重要與需求程度分析並藉由圖 3
至 圖7之散佈圖區分不同平均得分屬性的相
對位置進一步提出實用的建議與特定功能
屬性的策略應用
圖 3 安全功能之散佈圖
由上圖 3可發現
1 用電過載警示瓦斯安全孩童靠近
熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒童安全設計瓦斯爐
具設定時裝置熄火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
其優先性最低設計者可以先不要放入太多
心力與資源
圖 4 健康功能之散佈圖
由上圖 4可發現
1 透過電腦營養系統依照不同狀況與
疾病提供餐飲建議家中老年人可使用事件
備忘系統等功能落於第一象限代表這些功
能是填答者認為既重要又有需求的可做為
設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱溫度
異常落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能
是需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有
未來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行
銷喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市
場
3 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
較不具優先性
圖 5 節能功能之散佈圖
由上圖 5可發現
1 透過電腦或手機監視家中資訊家電
狀況透過網路打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱門
未關緊透過電腦顯示廚房使用電量等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 在任何房間內可以操控其他房間或
走道上之電燈功能落於第四象限代表填答
者認為此功能是需求程度高但重要程度低
的此功能具有未來發展的決定性關鍵因
素將來可以以行銷喚起消費者的重視獲
取更多的消費者市場
3 出門在外可以透過網路操控家中燈
光系統透過電腦或手機控制各房間的溫度
9
及亮度等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者
認為重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可
將其列為較不重要的設計項目
圖 6 便利功能之散佈圖
由上圖 6可發現
1 廚房中互動螢幕可直接撥出與接聽
電話廚房中互動螢幕可與門口外面的人做
影像通訊與開門的動作等功能落於第一象
限代表這些功能是填答者認為既重要又有
需求的可做為設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過互動螢幕可以手寫方式快速留
言落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能是
需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有未
來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行銷
喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市場
3 透過電腦或手機查詢冰箱及櫥櫃之
食品數量與保存期限透過互動系統與遠方
之家人共進晚餐和聊天等功能落於第三象
限這些是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低
之功能設計者可將其列為較不重要的設計
項目
圖 7 舒適功能之散佈圖
由上圖 7可發現
1 餐椅可自動歸位讓使用者方便整理
與餐椅可識別使用者身分調整到舒適坐姿兩
功能落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者
認為既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計
之重要參考
2 透過餐桌自動顯示使用者的電子郵
件與行事曆智慧桌具有休閒娛樂的功能
智慧桌具有自動排版功能智慧桌具有互動
的功能易與遠方作資訊交換或玩互動式遊
戲等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者認為
重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可依序
參考其優先性作為規劃設計的參考
32 其他子計畫之期中成果
根據子計畫一之研究結果其餘各子計畫
之期中進度可以簡要說明如下
(1) 子計畫二之期中成果
子計畫二目前已經完成的工作如下
RFID 系統設備的選型與測試
冰箱與櫥櫃內部 RFID 天線的設計與佈
署
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之嵌入式系統的建
立
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之觸控式面板的建
立
(2) 子計畫三之期中成果
本子計畫分為互動魔法窗廚房安全以
及行為分析等三個研究方向其中使用超音
波感測觀察者位置並且操作遠端 IPcam 的部
份已經完成雛形並且已經撰寫成論文而被
INCN09 國際研討會接受
用電安全方面目前已經完成插座使用電
量偵測電路可以監控到 1500 W 的用電量
並且可以在用電過載時發出警報甚至切斷
插座電源
行為分析方面目前已完成由監視攝影機
影像追蹤廚房中人員使用者不需穿戴任
何感應裝置
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
2
以 U 化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現(13) ldquoThe Design and Implementation of the Smart House Based
on the Ubiquitous Kitchenrdquo
計畫編號NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001 執行期間97 年 11 月 1 日 至 98 年 10 月 31 日
主持人盧春林 崑山科技大學電腦通訊系教授
摘要 關鍵詞智慧優質住宅廚房
本計畫預計以三年的時間實現「以 U 化
廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計」共包括一個
總計畫與分為七個子計畫總計畫與各子計畫
的名稱分別是(a)總計畫以 U 化廚房為中心
之優質住宅的設計與實現(b)子計畫一智慧
化廚房的使用者需求心理知覺與滿意度分析
--以使用者為中心的互動設計回饋之研究(c)
子計畫二RFID 智慧型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統
之研製(d)子計畫三智慧感知之互動家庭環
境控制系統的研製(e)子計畫四智慧型健康
餐桌椅的設計與實現(f)子計畫五網路訊息
整合中心的研製(g)子計畫六射頻天線與收
發機系統的設計與實現(7)子計畫七智慧型
營養與食物管理平台
本計畫為三年期計畫目前進行到第一年
的前半年主要成果是子計畫一完成使用者需
求調查得到幾個重結論可供其他子計畫研究
的參考其他子計畫除了完成大部分設備採購
之外研究工作也都按照計畫書的預期進度進
行
Abstract Keywords house intelligent kitchen
ubiquitous u-kitchen
This is a three years project The project
includes one main project and seven
sub-projects The titles of them are listed as the
follows
(a) Main project The design and
implementation of the smart house based on the
ubiquitous kitchen (U-kitchen) (b) Sub-project
1 The study of user demand and accepted
degree for U-kitchen (c) Sub-project 2 The
implementation of a smart refrigerator and a
cupboard based on RFID with video and audio
processing (d) Sub project 3 The
implementation of the control system for an
interactive home environment with smart
perception (e) Sub-project 4 The design and
implementation of a smart dinner table and
chairs with health promotion (f) Sub-project 5
The implementation of the network message
integrating center (g) Sub-project 6 The
design and implementation of the antennas and
transceivers for the RF applications (h)
Sub-project 7 The implementation of the smart
platform for the management of the nutrition of
food
This report describes the achievements of
the first half year of the project The main
contribution of the first half year comes from
Sub-project 1 which reports the demands of the
possible users of the smart house with the
investigation topics focused on U-kitchen The
rest Sub-projects are all on schedule in the
equipment installation and the researching
3
一計畫的緣由與目的
何謂前瞻優質生活環境科技讓我們先
看看下列情境
不必打開冰箱就可以知道冰箱有什麼使
用 RFID 作為冰箱內物品規格與數量的感
測並經由有線或無線網路連接到外部電
腦使用者不必打開冰箱就可以知道冰
箱內有什麼物品
主動提醒物品即將到期電腦可以將物品
的使用期限和電腦本身的日期做比對
對於使用期限即將到達的物品當使用者
操作冰箱時電腦會主動發出提醒信號
幫忙網購冰箱的電腦會以物品名稱為關
鍵字主動連上購物網站將相關訊息顯
示出來不必鍵盤操作只需要簡單的點
選冰箱就可以幫忙訂購物品
參考食譜藉由觸控螢幕的點選使用者
可以輕鬆的找到食物的參考烹飪方法或
者是提供多種食譜以供選擇
遙控操作冰箱既然可以連上網路必然
可以由遠端使用電腦或手機連接察看冰
箱現有內容作為購物的參考
影音信息平台藉由 RFID 讀取系統冰
箱的顯示器也可以作為 RFID 廣告單或者
是 RFID 卡片的影音顯示平台豐富數位
生活的內容
影像電話藉由網路電話的功能人在廚
房工作一樣可以使用視訊電話與人溝
通
遠方親友虛擬聚餐冰箱通常擺放在餐廳
附近藉由冰箱影音系統的連接以作為
虛擬窗戶的功能就可以讓分隔兩地的兩
個家庭共進晚餐尤其是透過遠端互動操
作網路攝影機可以讓虛擬聚餐變得更為
真實兩家人虛擬聚餐就像在窗戶的兩
邊將有助於親情與友情的提升
家庭安全監控系統的人機介面藉由網路
的連接家庭安全監控系統的狀態一目了
然而藉由冰箱影音人機介面的操作人
在廚房工作一樣可以看到門口訪客的影
像一樣可以決定要不要開門既安全又
不會錯過好友的到訪
情境燈光系統的顯示與控制數位及生活
的燈光系統不但要省能還要具有智慧
不但可以在任何房間知道其他房間的燈
光狀態也可以進一步手動打開或關閉其
他房間的燈光以達到省能的目的還可
以根據使用者的喜好自動開燈關燈
甚至變化燈光亮度或者是顏色而這些模
式的操作或狀態顯示等等資訊透過影音
冰箱的顯示屏幕人在廚房照樣清清楚
楚
顯示用電量藉由即時與平均用電量的顯
示提醒使用者盡量減少冰箱門的開關次
數已達到節能的目的
人性化的操作介面在影音冰箱具備如此
多樣功能之後如何讓使用者可以輕易操
作尤其家中不會使用電腦的長者可以輕
易學會使用變成是整個成果的關鍵技
術另一方面好的產品一定需要包裝
漂亮的東西使用者才會喜歡研發成果才
會具有價值此時設計背景的專家就會
發揮最大功效
餐廳情境控制系統用餐時影音顯示螢
幕將會播放宜人圖畫及悅耳音樂也會
配合使用者的穿著變化影音內容甚至調
整燈光系統讓用餐變成是奢侈的享受
讓心情盡量放鬆
餐廳座椅具備簡易健康檢測系統用餐時
順便做個簡單的體重體溫檢測還可以
4
提醒用餐注意事項用餐不單是享受愉快
的氣氛還可以順便做個健康檢查另
外對於孩童使用者還可以自動調整椅
子的高度
由於優質家庭生活科技的目標是在於改
善人類的生活因此全世界莫不積極投入
例如麻省理工學院(MIT)喬治亞科技學院
(Georgia Institute of Technology)以及科羅
拉多大學(University of Colorado)等名校
不但早就積極投入而且也已經有了具體的成
果國內方面鄰近的國立成功大學也早在幾
年前就投入研究例如成功大學電機系與華新
麗華集團合作成立的「數位生活科技研究中
心」(CREDITCenter for Research of E-life
DIgital Technology)就已經投入數位生活科技
方面的研究許多年也已經有許多具體成果
[10]另外成大奇美大樓已經落成其一樓
也擴充為「成大優質生活體驗屋」積極投入
數位生活科技的研究[8]還有交通大學資工系
的 iMouseECO-House[9]文化大學的智慧
建築模擬實驗室等[12]
國科會最近為了推展「科文共裕」分別
在北中南各設一個智慧家庭科技創新與整合
中心也就是台大的 Insight center[13]交大
的 Eco-city center[14]以及成大的 Touch
center[15]等三個區域整合中心而鄰近國家比
較有名的有 Panasonic 的 The house of the
Future[16]以及韓國的 u-Home[17]等由上
述說明不難看出數位生活科技的重要性與發
展的迫切性
本計畫的目的是研究與開發「前瞻優質
生活環境科技」而以無所不在或稱為 U 化
(Ubiquiteous)的服務為訴求將 U 化技術實
現在日常生活關係最密切的生活環境--廚房與
餐廳之中並將對廚房 U 化之需求技術實
現使用評估與回饋等做一系列的研究與開
發首先根據不動產經營專家的經驗目前
住宅的發展趨勢可以歸納出下列幾點
現代化住宅設備日新月異光是大投資購
置豪華設備已經不符市場需求必須進一
步提升為智慧化才能重新贏得消費者的
青睞
現代女性為家庭生活中心居家時間最
長尊重女性的設計將是未來住宅設計的
主流趨勢
廚房與餐廳為家庭中全家人每天必須使
用到的環境特別是對於老人與小孩而
言提供友善安全舒適方便與健
康的環境是極為重要的
現代科技都朝向節能與環保的方向在努
力因此智慧型廚房也必須結合節能環保
的設計理念
內政部建研所長丁育群曾經表示「預估
到公元 2015 年全球數位化居住空間所衍生
之相關產業將達 1000 億美元之產值高度數
位化的智慧居住生活系統將成為居住生活設
施中最重要的一環」內政部建築研究所「智
慧建築標章」審查委員會召集人中國文化大
學溫琇玲教授更對「智慧化居住空間」做進一
步說明所謂智慧化居住空間絕對不只是將
建築予與資訊化網路化與自動化而已必須
是透過資訊基礎建設結合電子電機資通
訊相關產業技術與自動化設備建構智慧化居
住空間創造及享有安全健康便利舒適
與永續經營的生活形態
這裡所謂的「智慧居住生活系統」或者
是「智慧化居住空間」又叫做「優質家庭生
活」(U-Home ubiquitous home life)是利
用無所不在(ubiquitous)的服務技術來創造未
來生活環境的新模式讓未來的生活能夠與家
人分享更多的時間同時又能提升工作的愉
快在溫和方便的無所不在之社會世界都
是親密的鄰居
另一方面廚房與餐廳不但是家中女主人
5
的主要活動區域也是家中不分老少每天都必
須使用的場所尤其是目前的住宅買賣市場
常常是由女主人決定而女主人最在意的當然
是廚房與餐廳的方便性與舒適性因此本計
畫的願景在於使用有線及無線通訊技術例如
網際網路RFID以及 ZigBee 等將其應用
並實現在未來優質家庭生活所需的各項技術
裡面尤其是使用在廚房與餐廳的各項產品與
技術讓家中的女主人享受無所不在的智慧
具體減輕女主人的工作壓力讓優質智慧家庭
的科技得以真正發揮功效
於是本團隊決定將專題的研究目標鎖定
在廚房的 U 化方面換句話說家庭成員只要
在廚房或餐廳裡面就可以擁有無所不在的服
務而可以克服空間的限制例如可以在廚
房操控其他房間的電燈而不必走到其他房間
去關燈再如可以在廚房打影像電話而不必走
到客廳或書房的電腦前面又如可以在餐廳直
接和門口的訪客對話並操作大門的開與關而
不必走到大門另如可以在餐桌觀看新聞打
互動遊戲等等都是所謂「無所不在的服務」
本整合型計畫的總體目標在於結合「科技
類」「商業類」「藝術類」以及「健康
類」等各種不同專長領域的研究團隊分工合
作來研究跨領域優質生活環境相關技術希望
藉由商業類的需求分析與滿意度回饋的專
長來確保研究開發的產品可以真正符合消費
者的需求也就是讓產品開發的程序是先有需
求再尋找可用技術而有別於習見之純技術
研究等技術開發出來之後再勉強找應用配
對的窘境至於產品開發之時不但有藝術專
長的團隊幫忙修飾產品的外觀提升產品的附
加價值更有工業設計專長的團隊幫忙考量人
體工學讓研究成果更為實用而安全健康
與舒適既是團隊的最終目標則健康相關的食
品營養團隊當然不能缺席
二研究方法
本計畫預計以三年的時間實現「以 U 化
廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計」並且將具體
的工作內容分為七個子計畫如圖 1 所示總
計畫與各子計畫的名稱分別是
總計畫以 U 化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計
與實現
子計畫一(商管團隊)智慧化廚房的使用者
需求心理知覺與滿意度分析--以使用者為
中心的互動設計回饋之研究
子計畫二(RFID 技術與應用)RFID 智慧
型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
子計畫三(感測與控制團隊)智慧感知之互
動家庭環境控制系統的研製
子計畫四(科技與藝術團隊)智慧型健康餐
桌椅的設計與實現
子計畫五(網路團隊)網路訊息整合中心的
研製
子計畫六(射頻技術與應用)射頻天線與收
發機系統的設計與實現
子計畫七(營養與健康團隊)智慧型營養與
食物管理平台
本團隊經過初步的需求分析(子計畫
一)先將廚房 U 化的標的物選擇在 RFID 冰
箱(子計畫二)感知與互動控制功能(子計
畫三)以及智慧健康餐桌椅(子計畫四)等
三大方向而為了達成上述功能網路與資料
庫(子計畫五)以及射頻天線與收發機(子
計畫六)將是不可或缺的基礎建設尤其是如
何設計指向性天線以及天線應該如何配置
才能讓無線網路如 ZigBeeRFID甚至 WiFi
等既暢通又盡量降低對人體造成傷害是非常
重要的課題又因為冰箱餐桌椅和食物息息
相關而食物又對健康影響甚巨因此食品
營養與健康參數的量測(子計畫七)是整個團
隊不可或缺的一員
6
RFID智慧型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧感知之互動家庭環境控制系統的研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧型健康餐桌椅的設計與實現
視訊傳播系電腦與通訊系
總計畫 以U化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現
智慧化廚房的使用者需求心理知覺與滿意度分析
不動產經營系企業管理系
子計畫一
子計畫二 子計畫三 子計畫四
射頻天線與收發機系統的設計與實現
電腦與通訊系
子計畫六
網路訊息整合中心的研製
電腦與通訊系
子計畫五
智慧型營養與食物管理平台
崑山資科院成大醫院
子計畫七
圖 1總計畫與子計畫的關連圖
另外為了能夠在有限人力下發揮最大效
用子計畫一也幫團隊收集並規劃出一些廚
房常見的器具或功能並且將這些功能分為
基本機能豪華功能以及 U 化功能等三個
等級如表一所示以便其他子計畫能朝正
確方向發展這個表格的內容雖然不完整
不過卻能夠讓團隊的其他子計畫找到具體的
研究方向
表一廚房功能的分類
基本機能 所需設備 豪華功
能
U 化功
能 1 烹飪
炒鍋平
鍋湯鍋
壓力鍋
悶燒鍋
電鍋
微波爐
烤箱
爐台
料理台
調味料架
切具鉆
板
除油煙機
預約煮
飯功能
選擇
自動斷
電安全
裝置
節能爐
頭熄火
安全裝
置
旋轉式
吸力
連線控
制啟動
煮飯
計算卡
路里
依油煙
大小切
換吸力
強靜音
馬達過
熱保護
裝置 2 用餐
餐桌
餐椅
兒童餐椅
可摺疊
或延伸
人體工
學
可調整
高度
量體重
3 喝飲
料
飲水機
咖啡壺
濾水器
自動加
熱無水
斷電
自動煮
咖啡機
定期更
換濾心
顯示
4 清潔 洗槽
吸塵器 除塵洗
地機器
人
5 溝通
聊天
舒適
吧台
吧台椅
冷氣
預約開
關
留言記
事家事
管理
恆溫 6 收納 烘碗機
櫥櫃
碗櫃
電器櫃
洗乾
儲藏一
體
防火材
質關門
緩衝無
接縫防
蟲鋼琴
烤漆可
調高度
腳
迴路插
7
座 7 儲藏 冰箱
垃圾桶
廚餘桶
資源回收
筒
變頻恆
溫抑菌
感應開
啟
密閉鐵
胃堆肥
製造
庫存管
理訂貨
根據前面的參考文獻以及對照表一整
理的資料團隊決定將冰箱虛擬互動窗戶
無線燈光控制系統餐桌椅等予與 U 化分
別由子計畫二三四來研製這裡所謂的
U 化是將功能提升到「無所不在的服務」
例如餐桌上可以看到冰箱的資訊再如
餐桌上可以觀看房子內所有電燈的開關狀
態當然也可以由餐桌直接關閉電燈讓
隨手關燈變得更容易就算一時忘記也可
以很容易補救真正達到省能的目標而既
然是無所不在的服務餐桌上有的功能冰
箱上樣樣不能少因此大量的資訊將在網
路線上流動也因此需要一個子計畫專門幫
團隊開發與管理網路這就是子計畫五mdash網
路信息整合中心
由於無線網路系統在家庭的應用有日漸
普及的趨勢其中又以 ZigBee 最被看好而
既然是無線傳輸天線的設計就變得非常重
要天線做得好就有可能在不影響信號品
質的情況下將打到人體的電磁波盡量降
低讓無線網路的使用變得更健康子計畫
六的工作就是要設計並實現團隊所需的天
線只是電腦與通訊系或者說崑山科技
大學目前尚缺電磁波的無反射室對於天線
設計而言還是有些不方便其會影響到設計
天線的效率因此總計畫預定在第二年購
置電磁波的無反射室
三期中進度
專家說過想要工程師設計出可用的產
品必須先給他環境去體驗為了讓本研究
團隊創造出亮麗的成果本計畫取得本校「優
質家庭生活科技(u-Home)之關鍵技術特色發
展計畫」研究團隊的同意將本計畫研發所
需的基礎建設進駐到 u-Home 裡面如圖 2所
示為本校 u-Home 現在的客廳與廚房未來將
會配合本計畫的研究將客廳和廚房予與整
合也就是將兩者的地板改裝成同一水平
並且採用智慧建築觀念讓地板成為模組
化以利研究團隊架設與改變管線以及變
化餐桌椅與灶台之配置等等
圖 2崑山科技大學 u-Home 之客廳與廚房
本計畫共包含七個子計畫其中子計畫一
為本計畫的先鋒部隊負責研究與調查使用
者之需求以提供正確的研究方向給其他子
計畫參考是本期(計畫一開始的前半年)計
畫最重要的成果今將子計畫一的研究結果
說明如下
31 使用者需求分析(子計畫一期中成果)
本研究主要是根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
8
本中進行重要與需求程度分析並藉由圖 3
至 圖7之散佈圖區分不同平均得分屬性的相
對位置進一步提出實用的建議與特定功能
屬性的策略應用
圖 3 安全功能之散佈圖
由上圖 3可發現
1 用電過載警示瓦斯安全孩童靠近
熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒童安全設計瓦斯爐
具設定時裝置熄火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
其優先性最低設計者可以先不要放入太多
心力與資源
圖 4 健康功能之散佈圖
由上圖 4可發現
1 透過電腦營養系統依照不同狀況與
疾病提供餐飲建議家中老年人可使用事件
備忘系統等功能落於第一象限代表這些功
能是填答者認為既重要又有需求的可做為
設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱溫度
異常落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能
是需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有
未來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行
銷喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市
場
3 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
較不具優先性
圖 5 節能功能之散佈圖
由上圖 5可發現
1 透過電腦或手機監視家中資訊家電
狀況透過網路打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱門
未關緊透過電腦顯示廚房使用電量等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 在任何房間內可以操控其他房間或
走道上之電燈功能落於第四象限代表填答
者認為此功能是需求程度高但重要程度低
的此功能具有未來發展的決定性關鍵因
素將來可以以行銷喚起消費者的重視獲
取更多的消費者市場
3 出門在外可以透過網路操控家中燈
光系統透過電腦或手機控制各房間的溫度
9
及亮度等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者
認為重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可
將其列為較不重要的設計項目
圖 6 便利功能之散佈圖
由上圖 6可發現
1 廚房中互動螢幕可直接撥出與接聽
電話廚房中互動螢幕可與門口外面的人做
影像通訊與開門的動作等功能落於第一象
限代表這些功能是填答者認為既重要又有
需求的可做為設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過互動螢幕可以手寫方式快速留
言落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能是
需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有未
來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行銷
喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市場
3 透過電腦或手機查詢冰箱及櫥櫃之
食品數量與保存期限透過互動系統與遠方
之家人共進晚餐和聊天等功能落於第三象
限這些是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低
之功能設計者可將其列為較不重要的設計
項目
圖 7 舒適功能之散佈圖
由上圖 7可發現
1 餐椅可自動歸位讓使用者方便整理
與餐椅可識別使用者身分調整到舒適坐姿兩
功能落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者
認為既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計
之重要參考
2 透過餐桌自動顯示使用者的電子郵
件與行事曆智慧桌具有休閒娛樂的功能
智慧桌具有自動排版功能智慧桌具有互動
的功能易與遠方作資訊交換或玩互動式遊
戲等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者認為
重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可依序
參考其優先性作為規劃設計的參考
32 其他子計畫之期中成果
根據子計畫一之研究結果其餘各子計畫
之期中進度可以簡要說明如下
(1) 子計畫二之期中成果
子計畫二目前已經完成的工作如下
RFID 系統設備的選型與測試
冰箱與櫥櫃內部 RFID 天線的設計與佈
署
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之嵌入式系統的建
立
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之觸控式面板的建
立
(2) 子計畫三之期中成果
本子計畫分為互動魔法窗廚房安全以
及行為分析等三個研究方向其中使用超音
波感測觀察者位置並且操作遠端 IPcam 的部
份已經完成雛形並且已經撰寫成論文而被
INCN09 國際研討會接受
用電安全方面目前已經完成插座使用電
量偵測電路可以監控到 1500 W 的用電量
並且可以在用電過載時發出警報甚至切斷
插座電源
行為分析方面目前已完成由監視攝影機
影像追蹤廚房中人員使用者不需穿戴任
何感應裝置
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
3
一計畫的緣由與目的
何謂前瞻優質生活環境科技讓我們先
看看下列情境
不必打開冰箱就可以知道冰箱有什麼使
用 RFID 作為冰箱內物品規格與數量的感
測並經由有線或無線網路連接到外部電
腦使用者不必打開冰箱就可以知道冰
箱內有什麼物品
主動提醒物品即將到期電腦可以將物品
的使用期限和電腦本身的日期做比對
對於使用期限即將到達的物品當使用者
操作冰箱時電腦會主動發出提醒信號
幫忙網購冰箱的電腦會以物品名稱為關
鍵字主動連上購物網站將相關訊息顯
示出來不必鍵盤操作只需要簡單的點
選冰箱就可以幫忙訂購物品
參考食譜藉由觸控螢幕的點選使用者
可以輕鬆的找到食物的參考烹飪方法或
者是提供多種食譜以供選擇
遙控操作冰箱既然可以連上網路必然
可以由遠端使用電腦或手機連接察看冰
箱現有內容作為購物的參考
影音信息平台藉由 RFID 讀取系統冰
箱的顯示器也可以作為 RFID 廣告單或者
是 RFID 卡片的影音顯示平台豐富數位
生活的內容
影像電話藉由網路電話的功能人在廚
房工作一樣可以使用視訊電話與人溝
通
遠方親友虛擬聚餐冰箱通常擺放在餐廳
附近藉由冰箱影音系統的連接以作為
虛擬窗戶的功能就可以讓分隔兩地的兩
個家庭共進晚餐尤其是透過遠端互動操
作網路攝影機可以讓虛擬聚餐變得更為
真實兩家人虛擬聚餐就像在窗戶的兩
邊將有助於親情與友情的提升
家庭安全監控系統的人機介面藉由網路
的連接家庭安全監控系統的狀態一目了
然而藉由冰箱影音人機介面的操作人
在廚房工作一樣可以看到門口訪客的影
像一樣可以決定要不要開門既安全又
不會錯過好友的到訪
情境燈光系統的顯示與控制數位及生活
的燈光系統不但要省能還要具有智慧
不但可以在任何房間知道其他房間的燈
光狀態也可以進一步手動打開或關閉其
他房間的燈光以達到省能的目的還可
以根據使用者的喜好自動開燈關燈
甚至變化燈光亮度或者是顏色而這些模
式的操作或狀態顯示等等資訊透過影音
冰箱的顯示屏幕人在廚房照樣清清楚
楚
顯示用電量藉由即時與平均用電量的顯
示提醒使用者盡量減少冰箱門的開關次
數已達到節能的目的
人性化的操作介面在影音冰箱具備如此
多樣功能之後如何讓使用者可以輕易操
作尤其家中不會使用電腦的長者可以輕
易學會使用變成是整個成果的關鍵技
術另一方面好的產品一定需要包裝
漂亮的東西使用者才會喜歡研發成果才
會具有價值此時設計背景的專家就會
發揮最大功效
餐廳情境控制系統用餐時影音顯示螢
幕將會播放宜人圖畫及悅耳音樂也會
配合使用者的穿著變化影音內容甚至調
整燈光系統讓用餐變成是奢侈的享受
讓心情盡量放鬆
餐廳座椅具備簡易健康檢測系統用餐時
順便做個簡單的體重體溫檢測還可以
4
提醒用餐注意事項用餐不單是享受愉快
的氣氛還可以順便做個健康檢查另
外對於孩童使用者還可以自動調整椅
子的高度
由於優質家庭生活科技的目標是在於改
善人類的生活因此全世界莫不積極投入
例如麻省理工學院(MIT)喬治亞科技學院
(Georgia Institute of Technology)以及科羅
拉多大學(University of Colorado)等名校
不但早就積極投入而且也已經有了具體的成
果國內方面鄰近的國立成功大學也早在幾
年前就投入研究例如成功大學電機系與華新
麗華集團合作成立的「數位生活科技研究中
心」(CREDITCenter for Research of E-life
DIgital Technology)就已經投入數位生活科技
方面的研究許多年也已經有許多具體成果
[10]另外成大奇美大樓已經落成其一樓
也擴充為「成大優質生活體驗屋」積極投入
數位生活科技的研究[8]還有交通大學資工系
的 iMouseECO-House[9]文化大學的智慧
建築模擬實驗室等[12]
國科會最近為了推展「科文共裕」分別
在北中南各設一個智慧家庭科技創新與整合
中心也就是台大的 Insight center[13]交大
的 Eco-city center[14]以及成大的 Touch
center[15]等三個區域整合中心而鄰近國家比
較有名的有 Panasonic 的 The house of the
Future[16]以及韓國的 u-Home[17]等由上
述說明不難看出數位生活科技的重要性與發
展的迫切性
本計畫的目的是研究與開發「前瞻優質
生活環境科技」而以無所不在或稱為 U 化
(Ubiquiteous)的服務為訴求將 U 化技術實
現在日常生活關係最密切的生活環境--廚房與
餐廳之中並將對廚房 U 化之需求技術實
現使用評估與回饋等做一系列的研究與開
發首先根據不動產經營專家的經驗目前
住宅的發展趨勢可以歸納出下列幾點
現代化住宅設備日新月異光是大投資購
置豪華設備已經不符市場需求必須進一
步提升為智慧化才能重新贏得消費者的
青睞
現代女性為家庭生活中心居家時間最
長尊重女性的設計將是未來住宅設計的
主流趨勢
廚房與餐廳為家庭中全家人每天必須使
用到的環境特別是對於老人與小孩而
言提供友善安全舒適方便與健
康的環境是極為重要的
現代科技都朝向節能與環保的方向在努
力因此智慧型廚房也必須結合節能環保
的設計理念
內政部建研所長丁育群曾經表示「預估
到公元 2015 年全球數位化居住空間所衍生
之相關產業將達 1000 億美元之產值高度數
位化的智慧居住生活系統將成為居住生活設
施中最重要的一環」內政部建築研究所「智
慧建築標章」審查委員會召集人中國文化大
學溫琇玲教授更對「智慧化居住空間」做進一
步說明所謂智慧化居住空間絕對不只是將
建築予與資訊化網路化與自動化而已必須
是透過資訊基礎建設結合電子電機資通
訊相關產業技術與自動化設備建構智慧化居
住空間創造及享有安全健康便利舒適
與永續經營的生活形態
這裡所謂的「智慧居住生活系統」或者
是「智慧化居住空間」又叫做「優質家庭生
活」(U-Home ubiquitous home life)是利
用無所不在(ubiquitous)的服務技術來創造未
來生活環境的新模式讓未來的生活能夠與家
人分享更多的時間同時又能提升工作的愉
快在溫和方便的無所不在之社會世界都
是親密的鄰居
另一方面廚房與餐廳不但是家中女主人
5
的主要活動區域也是家中不分老少每天都必
須使用的場所尤其是目前的住宅買賣市場
常常是由女主人決定而女主人最在意的當然
是廚房與餐廳的方便性與舒適性因此本計
畫的願景在於使用有線及無線通訊技術例如
網際網路RFID以及 ZigBee 等將其應用
並實現在未來優質家庭生活所需的各項技術
裡面尤其是使用在廚房與餐廳的各項產品與
技術讓家中的女主人享受無所不在的智慧
具體減輕女主人的工作壓力讓優質智慧家庭
的科技得以真正發揮功效
於是本團隊決定將專題的研究目標鎖定
在廚房的 U 化方面換句話說家庭成員只要
在廚房或餐廳裡面就可以擁有無所不在的服
務而可以克服空間的限制例如可以在廚
房操控其他房間的電燈而不必走到其他房間
去關燈再如可以在廚房打影像電話而不必走
到客廳或書房的電腦前面又如可以在餐廳直
接和門口的訪客對話並操作大門的開與關而
不必走到大門另如可以在餐桌觀看新聞打
互動遊戲等等都是所謂「無所不在的服務」
本整合型計畫的總體目標在於結合「科技
類」「商業類」「藝術類」以及「健康
類」等各種不同專長領域的研究團隊分工合
作來研究跨領域優質生活環境相關技術希望
藉由商業類的需求分析與滿意度回饋的專
長來確保研究開發的產品可以真正符合消費
者的需求也就是讓產品開發的程序是先有需
求再尋找可用技術而有別於習見之純技術
研究等技術開發出來之後再勉強找應用配
對的窘境至於產品開發之時不但有藝術專
長的團隊幫忙修飾產品的外觀提升產品的附
加價值更有工業設計專長的團隊幫忙考量人
體工學讓研究成果更為實用而安全健康
與舒適既是團隊的最終目標則健康相關的食
品營養團隊當然不能缺席
二研究方法
本計畫預計以三年的時間實現「以 U 化
廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計」並且將具體
的工作內容分為七個子計畫如圖 1 所示總
計畫與各子計畫的名稱分別是
總計畫以 U 化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計
與實現
子計畫一(商管團隊)智慧化廚房的使用者
需求心理知覺與滿意度分析--以使用者為
中心的互動設計回饋之研究
子計畫二(RFID 技術與應用)RFID 智慧
型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
子計畫三(感測與控制團隊)智慧感知之互
動家庭環境控制系統的研製
子計畫四(科技與藝術團隊)智慧型健康餐
桌椅的設計與實現
子計畫五(網路團隊)網路訊息整合中心的
研製
子計畫六(射頻技術與應用)射頻天線與收
發機系統的設計與實現
子計畫七(營養與健康團隊)智慧型營養與
食物管理平台
本團隊經過初步的需求分析(子計畫
一)先將廚房 U 化的標的物選擇在 RFID 冰
箱(子計畫二)感知與互動控制功能(子計
畫三)以及智慧健康餐桌椅(子計畫四)等
三大方向而為了達成上述功能網路與資料
庫(子計畫五)以及射頻天線與收發機(子
計畫六)將是不可或缺的基礎建設尤其是如
何設計指向性天線以及天線應該如何配置
才能讓無線網路如 ZigBeeRFID甚至 WiFi
等既暢通又盡量降低對人體造成傷害是非常
重要的課題又因為冰箱餐桌椅和食物息息
相關而食物又對健康影響甚巨因此食品
營養與健康參數的量測(子計畫七)是整個團
隊不可或缺的一員
6
RFID智慧型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧感知之互動家庭環境控制系統的研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧型健康餐桌椅的設計與實現
視訊傳播系電腦與通訊系
總計畫 以U化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現
智慧化廚房的使用者需求心理知覺與滿意度分析
不動產經營系企業管理系
子計畫一
子計畫二 子計畫三 子計畫四
射頻天線與收發機系統的設計與實現
電腦與通訊系
子計畫六
網路訊息整合中心的研製
電腦與通訊系
子計畫五
智慧型營養與食物管理平台
崑山資科院成大醫院
子計畫七
圖 1總計畫與子計畫的關連圖
另外為了能夠在有限人力下發揮最大效
用子計畫一也幫團隊收集並規劃出一些廚
房常見的器具或功能並且將這些功能分為
基本機能豪華功能以及 U 化功能等三個
等級如表一所示以便其他子計畫能朝正
確方向發展這個表格的內容雖然不完整
不過卻能夠讓團隊的其他子計畫找到具體的
研究方向
表一廚房功能的分類
基本機能 所需設備 豪華功
能
U 化功
能 1 烹飪
炒鍋平
鍋湯鍋
壓力鍋
悶燒鍋
電鍋
微波爐
烤箱
爐台
料理台
調味料架
切具鉆
板
除油煙機
預約煮
飯功能
選擇
自動斷
電安全
裝置
節能爐
頭熄火
安全裝
置
旋轉式
吸力
連線控
制啟動
煮飯
計算卡
路里
依油煙
大小切
換吸力
強靜音
馬達過
熱保護
裝置 2 用餐
餐桌
餐椅
兒童餐椅
可摺疊
或延伸
人體工
學
可調整
高度
量體重
3 喝飲
料
飲水機
咖啡壺
濾水器
自動加
熱無水
斷電
自動煮
咖啡機
定期更
換濾心
顯示
4 清潔 洗槽
吸塵器 除塵洗
地機器
人
5 溝通
聊天
舒適
吧台
吧台椅
冷氣
預約開
關
留言記
事家事
管理
恆溫 6 收納 烘碗機
櫥櫃
碗櫃
電器櫃
洗乾
儲藏一
體
防火材
質關門
緩衝無
接縫防
蟲鋼琴
烤漆可
調高度
腳
迴路插
7
座 7 儲藏 冰箱
垃圾桶
廚餘桶
資源回收
筒
變頻恆
溫抑菌
感應開
啟
密閉鐵
胃堆肥
製造
庫存管
理訂貨
根據前面的參考文獻以及對照表一整
理的資料團隊決定將冰箱虛擬互動窗戶
無線燈光控制系統餐桌椅等予與 U 化分
別由子計畫二三四來研製這裡所謂的
U 化是將功能提升到「無所不在的服務」
例如餐桌上可以看到冰箱的資訊再如
餐桌上可以觀看房子內所有電燈的開關狀
態當然也可以由餐桌直接關閉電燈讓
隨手關燈變得更容易就算一時忘記也可
以很容易補救真正達到省能的目標而既
然是無所不在的服務餐桌上有的功能冰
箱上樣樣不能少因此大量的資訊將在網
路線上流動也因此需要一個子計畫專門幫
團隊開發與管理網路這就是子計畫五mdash網
路信息整合中心
由於無線網路系統在家庭的應用有日漸
普及的趨勢其中又以 ZigBee 最被看好而
既然是無線傳輸天線的設計就變得非常重
要天線做得好就有可能在不影響信號品
質的情況下將打到人體的電磁波盡量降
低讓無線網路的使用變得更健康子計畫
六的工作就是要設計並實現團隊所需的天
線只是電腦與通訊系或者說崑山科技
大學目前尚缺電磁波的無反射室對於天線
設計而言還是有些不方便其會影響到設計
天線的效率因此總計畫預定在第二年購
置電磁波的無反射室
三期中進度
專家說過想要工程師設計出可用的產
品必須先給他環境去體驗為了讓本研究
團隊創造出亮麗的成果本計畫取得本校「優
質家庭生活科技(u-Home)之關鍵技術特色發
展計畫」研究團隊的同意將本計畫研發所
需的基礎建設進駐到 u-Home 裡面如圖 2所
示為本校 u-Home 現在的客廳與廚房未來將
會配合本計畫的研究將客廳和廚房予與整
合也就是將兩者的地板改裝成同一水平
並且採用智慧建築觀念讓地板成為模組
化以利研究團隊架設與改變管線以及變
化餐桌椅與灶台之配置等等
圖 2崑山科技大學 u-Home 之客廳與廚房
本計畫共包含七個子計畫其中子計畫一
為本計畫的先鋒部隊負責研究與調查使用
者之需求以提供正確的研究方向給其他子
計畫參考是本期(計畫一開始的前半年)計
畫最重要的成果今將子計畫一的研究結果
說明如下
31 使用者需求分析(子計畫一期中成果)
本研究主要是根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
8
本中進行重要與需求程度分析並藉由圖 3
至 圖7之散佈圖區分不同平均得分屬性的相
對位置進一步提出實用的建議與特定功能
屬性的策略應用
圖 3 安全功能之散佈圖
由上圖 3可發現
1 用電過載警示瓦斯安全孩童靠近
熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒童安全設計瓦斯爐
具設定時裝置熄火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
其優先性最低設計者可以先不要放入太多
心力與資源
圖 4 健康功能之散佈圖
由上圖 4可發現
1 透過電腦營養系統依照不同狀況與
疾病提供餐飲建議家中老年人可使用事件
備忘系統等功能落於第一象限代表這些功
能是填答者認為既重要又有需求的可做為
設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱溫度
異常落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能
是需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有
未來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行
銷喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市
場
3 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
較不具優先性
圖 5 節能功能之散佈圖
由上圖 5可發現
1 透過電腦或手機監視家中資訊家電
狀況透過網路打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱門
未關緊透過電腦顯示廚房使用電量等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 在任何房間內可以操控其他房間或
走道上之電燈功能落於第四象限代表填答
者認為此功能是需求程度高但重要程度低
的此功能具有未來發展的決定性關鍵因
素將來可以以行銷喚起消費者的重視獲
取更多的消費者市場
3 出門在外可以透過網路操控家中燈
光系統透過電腦或手機控制各房間的溫度
9
及亮度等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者
認為重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可
將其列為較不重要的設計項目
圖 6 便利功能之散佈圖
由上圖 6可發現
1 廚房中互動螢幕可直接撥出與接聽
電話廚房中互動螢幕可與門口外面的人做
影像通訊與開門的動作等功能落於第一象
限代表這些功能是填答者認為既重要又有
需求的可做為設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過互動螢幕可以手寫方式快速留
言落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能是
需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有未
來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行銷
喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市場
3 透過電腦或手機查詢冰箱及櫥櫃之
食品數量與保存期限透過互動系統與遠方
之家人共進晚餐和聊天等功能落於第三象
限這些是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低
之功能設計者可將其列為較不重要的設計
項目
圖 7 舒適功能之散佈圖
由上圖 7可發現
1 餐椅可自動歸位讓使用者方便整理
與餐椅可識別使用者身分調整到舒適坐姿兩
功能落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者
認為既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計
之重要參考
2 透過餐桌自動顯示使用者的電子郵
件與行事曆智慧桌具有休閒娛樂的功能
智慧桌具有自動排版功能智慧桌具有互動
的功能易與遠方作資訊交換或玩互動式遊
戲等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者認為
重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可依序
參考其優先性作為規劃設計的參考
32 其他子計畫之期中成果
根據子計畫一之研究結果其餘各子計畫
之期中進度可以簡要說明如下
(1) 子計畫二之期中成果
子計畫二目前已經完成的工作如下
RFID 系統設備的選型與測試
冰箱與櫥櫃內部 RFID 天線的設計與佈
署
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之嵌入式系統的建
立
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之觸控式面板的建
立
(2) 子計畫三之期中成果
本子計畫分為互動魔法窗廚房安全以
及行為分析等三個研究方向其中使用超音
波感測觀察者位置並且操作遠端 IPcam 的部
份已經完成雛形並且已經撰寫成論文而被
INCN09 國際研討會接受
用電安全方面目前已經完成插座使用電
量偵測電路可以監控到 1500 W 的用電量
並且可以在用電過載時發出警報甚至切斷
插座電源
行為分析方面目前已完成由監視攝影機
影像追蹤廚房中人員使用者不需穿戴任
何感應裝置
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
4
提醒用餐注意事項用餐不單是享受愉快
的氣氛還可以順便做個健康檢查另
外對於孩童使用者還可以自動調整椅
子的高度
由於優質家庭生活科技的目標是在於改
善人類的生活因此全世界莫不積極投入
例如麻省理工學院(MIT)喬治亞科技學院
(Georgia Institute of Technology)以及科羅
拉多大學(University of Colorado)等名校
不但早就積極投入而且也已經有了具體的成
果國內方面鄰近的國立成功大學也早在幾
年前就投入研究例如成功大學電機系與華新
麗華集團合作成立的「數位生活科技研究中
心」(CREDITCenter for Research of E-life
DIgital Technology)就已經投入數位生活科技
方面的研究許多年也已經有許多具體成果
[10]另外成大奇美大樓已經落成其一樓
也擴充為「成大優質生活體驗屋」積極投入
數位生活科技的研究[8]還有交通大學資工系
的 iMouseECO-House[9]文化大學的智慧
建築模擬實驗室等[12]
國科會最近為了推展「科文共裕」分別
在北中南各設一個智慧家庭科技創新與整合
中心也就是台大的 Insight center[13]交大
的 Eco-city center[14]以及成大的 Touch
center[15]等三個區域整合中心而鄰近國家比
較有名的有 Panasonic 的 The house of the
Future[16]以及韓國的 u-Home[17]等由上
述說明不難看出數位生活科技的重要性與發
展的迫切性
本計畫的目的是研究與開發「前瞻優質
生活環境科技」而以無所不在或稱為 U 化
(Ubiquiteous)的服務為訴求將 U 化技術實
現在日常生活關係最密切的生活環境--廚房與
餐廳之中並將對廚房 U 化之需求技術實
現使用評估與回饋等做一系列的研究與開
發首先根據不動產經營專家的經驗目前
住宅的發展趨勢可以歸納出下列幾點
現代化住宅設備日新月異光是大投資購
置豪華設備已經不符市場需求必須進一
步提升為智慧化才能重新贏得消費者的
青睞
現代女性為家庭生活中心居家時間最
長尊重女性的設計將是未來住宅設計的
主流趨勢
廚房與餐廳為家庭中全家人每天必須使
用到的環境特別是對於老人與小孩而
言提供友善安全舒適方便與健
康的環境是極為重要的
現代科技都朝向節能與環保的方向在努
力因此智慧型廚房也必須結合節能環保
的設計理念
內政部建研所長丁育群曾經表示「預估
到公元 2015 年全球數位化居住空間所衍生
之相關產業將達 1000 億美元之產值高度數
位化的智慧居住生活系統將成為居住生活設
施中最重要的一環」內政部建築研究所「智
慧建築標章」審查委員會召集人中國文化大
學溫琇玲教授更對「智慧化居住空間」做進一
步說明所謂智慧化居住空間絕對不只是將
建築予與資訊化網路化與自動化而已必須
是透過資訊基礎建設結合電子電機資通
訊相關產業技術與自動化設備建構智慧化居
住空間創造及享有安全健康便利舒適
與永續經營的生活形態
這裡所謂的「智慧居住生活系統」或者
是「智慧化居住空間」又叫做「優質家庭生
活」(U-Home ubiquitous home life)是利
用無所不在(ubiquitous)的服務技術來創造未
來生活環境的新模式讓未來的生活能夠與家
人分享更多的時間同時又能提升工作的愉
快在溫和方便的無所不在之社會世界都
是親密的鄰居
另一方面廚房與餐廳不但是家中女主人
5
的主要活動區域也是家中不分老少每天都必
須使用的場所尤其是目前的住宅買賣市場
常常是由女主人決定而女主人最在意的當然
是廚房與餐廳的方便性與舒適性因此本計
畫的願景在於使用有線及無線通訊技術例如
網際網路RFID以及 ZigBee 等將其應用
並實現在未來優質家庭生活所需的各項技術
裡面尤其是使用在廚房與餐廳的各項產品與
技術讓家中的女主人享受無所不在的智慧
具體減輕女主人的工作壓力讓優質智慧家庭
的科技得以真正發揮功效
於是本團隊決定將專題的研究目標鎖定
在廚房的 U 化方面換句話說家庭成員只要
在廚房或餐廳裡面就可以擁有無所不在的服
務而可以克服空間的限制例如可以在廚
房操控其他房間的電燈而不必走到其他房間
去關燈再如可以在廚房打影像電話而不必走
到客廳或書房的電腦前面又如可以在餐廳直
接和門口的訪客對話並操作大門的開與關而
不必走到大門另如可以在餐桌觀看新聞打
互動遊戲等等都是所謂「無所不在的服務」
本整合型計畫的總體目標在於結合「科技
類」「商業類」「藝術類」以及「健康
類」等各種不同專長領域的研究團隊分工合
作來研究跨領域優質生活環境相關技術希望
藉由商業類的需求分析與滿意度回饋的專
長來確保研究開發的產品可以真正符合消費
者的需求也就是讓產品開發的程序是先有需
求再尋找可用技術而有別於習見之純技術
研究等技術開發出來之後再勉強找應用配
對的窘境至於產品開發之時不但有藝術專
長的團隊幫忙修飾產品的外觀提升產品的附
加價值更有工業設計專長的團隊幫忙考量人
體工學讓研究成果更為實用而安全健康
與舒適既是團隊的最終目標則健康相關的食
品營養團隊當然不能缺席
二研究方法
本計畫預計以三年的時間實現「以 U 化
廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計」並且將具體
的工作內容分為七個子計畫如圖 1 所示總
計畫與各子計畫的名稱分別是
總計畫以 U 化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計
與實現
子計畫一(商管團隊)智慧化廚房的使用者
需求心理知覺與滿意度分析--以使用者為
中心的互動設計回饋之研究
子計畫二(RFID 技術與應用)RFID 智慧
型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
子計畫三(感測與控制團隊)智慧感知之互
動家庭環境控制系統的研製
子計畫四(科技與藝術團隊)智慧型健康餐
桌椅的設計與實現
子計畫五(網路團隊)網路訊息整合中心的
研製
子計畫六(射頻技術與應用)射頻天線與收
發機系統的設計與實現
子計畫七(營養與健康團隊)智慧型營養與
食物管理平台
本團隊經過初步的需求分析(子計畫
一)先將廚房 U 化的標的物選擇在 RFID 冰
箱(子計畫二)感知與互動控制功能(子計
畫三)以及智慧健康餐桌椅(子計畫四)等
三大方向而為了達成上述功能網路與資料
庫(子計畫五)以及射頻天線與收發機(子
計畫六)將是不可或缺的基礎建設尤其是如
何設計指向性天線以及天線應該如何配置
才能讓無線網路如 ZigBeeRFID甚至 WiFi
等既暢通又盡量降低對人體造成傷害是非常
重要的課題又因為冰箱餐桌椅和食物息息
相關而食物又對健康影響甚巨因此食品
營養與健康參數的量測(子計畫七)是整個團
隊不可或缺的一員
6
RFID智慧型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧感知之互動家庭環境控制系統的研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧型健康餐桌椅的設計與實現
視訊傳播系電腦與通訊系
總計畫 以U化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現
智慧化廚房的使用者需求心理知覺與滿意度分析
不動產經營系企業管理系
子計畫一
子計畫二 子計畫三 子計畫四
射頻天線與收發機系統的設計與實現
電腦與通訊系
子計畫六
網路訊息整合中心的研製
電腦與通訊系
子計畫五
智慧型營養與食物管理平台
崑山資科院成大醫院
子計畫七
圖 1總計畫與子計畫的關連圖
另外為了能夠在有限人力下發揮最大效
用子計畫一也幫團隊收集並規劃出一些廚
房常見的器具或功能並且將這些功能分為
基本機能豪華功能以及 U 化功能等三個
等級如表一所示以便其他子計畫能朝正
確方向發展這個表格的內容雖然不完整
不過卻能夠讓團隊的其他子計畫找到具體的
研究方向
表一廚房功能的分類
基本機能 所需設備 豪華功
能
U 化功
能 1 烹飪
炒鍋平
鍋湯鍋
壓力鍋
悶燒鍋
電鍋
微波爐
烤箱
爐台
料理台
調味料架
切具鉆
板
除油煙機
預約煮
飯功能
選擇
自動斷
電安全
裝置
節能爐
頭熄火
安全裝
置
旋轉式
吸力
連線控
制啟動
煮飯
計算卡
路里
依油煙
大小切
換吸力
強靜音
馬達過
熱保護
裝置 2 用餐
餐桌
餐椅
兒童餐椅
可摺疊
或延伸
人體工
學
可調整
高度
量體重
3 喝飲
料
飲水機
咖啡壺
濾水器
自動加
熱無水
斷電
自動煮
咖啡機
定期更
換濾心
顯示
4 清潔 洗槽
吸塵器 除塵洗
地機器
人
5 溝通
聊天
舒適
吧台
吧台椅
冷氣
預約開
關
留言記
事家事
管理
恆溫 6 收納 烘碗機
櫥櫃
碗櫃
電器櫃
洗乾
儲藏一
體
防火材
質關門
緩衝無
接縫防
蟲鋼琴
烤漆可
調高度
腳
迴路插
7
座 7 儲藏 冰箱
垃圾桶
廚餘桶
資源回收
筒
變頻恆
溫抑菌
感應開
啟
密閉鐵
胃堆肥
製造
庫存管
理訂貨
根據前面的參考文獻以及對照表一整
理的資料團隊決定將冰箱虛擬互動窗戶
無線燈光控制系統餐桌椅等予與 U 化分
別由子計畫二三四來研製這裡所謂的
U 化是將功能提升到「無所不在的服務」
例如餐桌上可以看到冰箱的資訊再如
餐桌上可以觀看房子內所有電燈的開關狀
態當然也可以由餐桌直接關閉電燈讓
隨手關燈變得更容易就算一時忘記也可
以很容易補救真正達到省能的目標而既
然是無所不在的服務餐桌上有的功能冰
箱上樣樣不能少因此大量的資訊將在網
路線上流動也因此需要一個子計畫專門幫
團隊開發與管理網路這就是子計畫五mdash網
路信息整合中心
由於無線網路系統在家庭的應用有日漸
普及的趨勢其中又以 ZigBee 最被看好而
既然是無線傳輸天線的設計就變得非常重
要天線做得好就有可能在不影響信號品
質的情況下將打到人體的電磁波盡量降
低讓無線網路的使用變得更健康子計畫
六的工作就是要設計並實現團隊所需的天
線只是電腦與通訊系或者說崑山科技
大學目前尚缺電磁波的無反射室對於天線
設計而言還是有些不方便其會影響到設計
天線的效率因此總計畫預定在第二年購
置電磁波的無反射室
三期中進度
專家說過想要工程師設計出可用的產
品必須先給他環境去體驗為了讓本研究
團隊創造出亮麗的成果本計畫取得本校「優
質家庭生活科技(u-Home)之關鍵技術特色發
展計畫」研究團隊的同意將本計畫研發所
需的基礎建設進駐到 u-Home 裡面如圖 2所
示為本校 u-Home 現在的客廳與廚房未來將
會配合本計畫的研究將客廳和廚房予與整
合也就是將兩者的地板改裝成同一水平
並且採用智慧建築觀念讓地板成為模組
化以利研究團隊架設與改變管線以及變
化餐桌椅與灶台之配置等等
圖 2崑山科技大學 u-Home 之客廳與廚房
本計畫共包含七個子計畫其中子計畫一
為本計畫的先鋒部隊負責研究與調查使用
者之需求以提供正確的研究方向給其他子
計畫參考是本期(計畫一開始的前半年)計
畫最重要的成果今將子計畫一的研究結果
說明如下
31 使用者需求分析(子計畫一期中成果)
本研究主要是根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
8
本中進行重要與需求程度分析並藉由圖 3
至 圖7之散佈圖區分不同平均得分屬性的相
對位置進一步提出實用的建議與特定功能
屬性的策略應用
圖 3 安全功能之散佈圖
由上圖 3可發現
1 用電過載警示瓦斯安全孩童靠近
熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒童安全設計瓦斯爐
具設定時裝置熄火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
其優先性最低設計者可以先不要放入太多
心力與資源
圖 4 健康功能之散佈圖
由上圖 4可發現
1 透過電腦營養系統依照不同狀況與
疾病提供餐飲建議家中老年人可使用事件
備忘系統等功能落於第一象限代表這些功
能是填答者認為既重要又有需求的可做為
設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱溫度
異常落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能
是需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有
未來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行
銷喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市
場
3 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
較不具優先性
圖 5 節能功能之散佈圖
由上圖 5可發現
1 透過電腦或手機監視家中資訊家電
狀況透過網路打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱門
未關緊透過電腦顯示廚房使用電量等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 在任何房間內可以操控其他房間或
走道上之電燈功能落於第四象限代表填答
者認為此功能是需求程度高但重要程度低
的此功能具有未來發展的決定性關鍵因
素將來可以以行銷喚起消費者的重視獲
取更多的消費者市場
3 出門在外可以透過網路操控家中燈
光系統透過電腦或手機控制各房間的溫度
9
及亮度等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者
認為重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可
將其列為較不重要的設計項目
圖 6 便利功能之散佈圖
由上圖 6可發現
1 廚房中互動螢幕可直接撥出與接聽
電話廚房中互動螢幕可與門口外面的人做
影像通訊與開門的動作等功能落於第一象
限代表這些功能是填答者認為既重要又有
需求的可做為設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過互動螢幕可以手寫方式快速留
言落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能是
需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有未
來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行銷
喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市場
3 透過電腦或手機查詢冰箱及櫥櫃之
食品數量與保存期限透過互動系統與遠方
之家人共進晚餐和聊天等功能落於第三象
限這些是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低
之功能設計者可將其列為較不重要的設計
項目
圖 7 舒適功能之散佈圖
由上圖 7可發現
1 餐椅可自動歸位讓使用者方便整理
與餐椅可識別使用者身分調整到舒適坐姿兩
功能落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者
認為既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計
之重要參考
2 透過餐桌自動顯示使用者的電子郵
件與行事曆智慧桌具有休閒娛樂的功能
智慧桌具有自動排版功能智慧桌具有互動
的功能易與遠方作資訊交換或玩互動式遊
戲等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者認為
重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可依序
參考其優先性作為規劃設計的參考
32 其他子計畫之期中成果
根據子計畫一之研究結果其餘各子計畫
之期中進度可以簡要說明如下
(1) 子計畫二之期中成果
子計畫二目前已經完成的工作如下
RFID 系統設備的選型與測試
冰箱與櫥櫃內部 RFID 天線的設計與佈
署
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之嵌入式系統的建
立
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之觸控式面板的建
立
(2) 子計畫三之期中成果
本子計畫分為互動魔法窗廚房安全以
及行為分析等三個研究方向其中使用超音
波感測觀察者位置並且操作遠端 IPcam 的部
份已經完成雛形並且已經撰寫成論文而被
INCN09 國際研討會接受
用電安全方面目前已經完成插座使用電
量偵測電路可以監控到 1500 W 的用電量
並且可以在用電過載時發出警報甚至切斷
插座電源
行為分析方面目前已完成由監視攝影機
影像追蹤廚房中人員使用者不需穿戴任
何感應裝置
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
5
的主要活動區域也是家中不分老少每天都必
須使用的場所尤其是目前的住宅買賣市場
常常是由女主人決定而女主人最在意的當然
是廚房與餐廳的方便性與舒適性因此本計
畫的願景在於使用有線及無線通訊技術例如
網際網路RFID以及 ZigBee 等將其應用
並實現在未來優質家庭生活所需的各項技術
裡面尤其是使用在廚房與餐廳的各項產品與
技術讓家中的女主人享受無所不在的智慧
具體減輕女主人的工作壓力讓優質智慧家庭
的科技得以真正發揮功效
於是本團隊決定將專題的研究目標鎖定
在廚房的 U 化方面換句話說家庭成員只要
在廚房或餐廳裡面就可以擁有無所不在的服
務而可以克服空間的限制例如可以在廚
房操控其他房間的電燈而不必走到其他房間
去關燈再如可以在廚房打影像電話而不必走
到客廳或書房的電腦前面又如可以在餐廳直
接和門口的訪客對話並操作大門的開與關而
不必走到大門另如可以在餐桌觀看新聞打
互動遊戲等等都是所謂「無所不在的服務」
本整合型計畫的總體目標在於結合「科技
類」「商業類」「藝術類」以及「健康
類」等各種不同專長領域的研究團隊分工合
作來研究跨領域優質生活環境相關技術希望
藉由商業類的需求分析與滿意度回饋的專
長來確保研究開發的產品可以真正符合消費
者的需求也就是讓產品開發的程序是先有需
求再尋找可用技術而有別於習見之純技術
研究等技術開發出來之後再勉強找應用配
對的窘境至於產品開發之時不但有藝術專
長的團隊幫忙修飾產品的外觀提升產品的附
加價值更有工業設計專長的團隊幫忙考量人
體工學讓研究成果更為實用而安全健康
與舒適既是團隊的最終目標則健康相關的食
品營養團隊當然不能缺席
二研究方法
本計畫預計以三年的時間實現「以 U 化
廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計」並且將具體
的工作內容分為七個子計畫如圖 1 所示總
計畫與各子計畫的名稱分別是
總計畫以 U 化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計
與實現
子計畫一(商管團隊)智慧化廚房的使用者
需求心理知覺與滿意度分析--以使用者為
中心的互動設計回饋之研究
子計畫二(RFID 技術與應用)RFID 智慧
型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
子計畫三(感測與控制團隊)智慧感知之互
動家庭環境控制系統的研製
子計畫四(科技與藝術團隊)智慧型健康餐
桌椅的設計與實現
子計畫五(網路團隊)網路訊息整合中心的
研製
子計畫六(射頻技術與應用)射頻天線與收
發機系統的設計與實現
子計畫七(營養與健康團隊)智慧型營養與
食物管理平台
本團隊經過初步的需求分析(子計畫
一)先將廚房 U 化的標的物選擇在 RFID 冰
箱(子計畫二)感知與互動控制功能(子計
畫三)以及智慧健康餐桌椅(子計畫四)等
三大方向而為了達成上述功能網路與資料
庫(子計畫五)以及射頻天線與收發機(子
計畫六)將是不可或缺的基礎建設尤其是如
何設計指向性天線以及天線應該如何配置
才能讓無線網路如 ZigBeeRFID甚至 WiFi
等既暢通又盡量降低對人體造成傷害是非常
重要的課題又因為冰箱餐桌椅和食物息息
相關而食物又對健康影響甚巨因此食品
營養與健康參數的量測(子計畫七)是整個團
隊不可或缺的一員
6
RFID智慧型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧感知之互動家庭環境控制系統的研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧型健康餐桌椅的設計與實現
視訊傳播系電腦與通訊系
總計畫 以U化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現
智慧化廚房的使用者需求心理知覺與滿意度分析
不動產經營系企業管理系
子計畫一
子計畫二 子計畫三 子計畫四
射頻天線與收發機系統的設計與實現
電腦與通訊系
子計畫六
網路訊息整合中心的研製
電腦與通訊系
子計畫五
智慧型營養與食物管理平台
崑山資科院成大醫院
子計畫七
圖 1總計畫與子計畫的關連圖
另外為了能夠在有限人力下發揮最大效
用子計畫一也幫團隊收集並規劃出一些廚
房常見的器具或功能並且將這些功能分為
基本機能豪華功能以及 U 化功能等三個
等級如表一所示以便其他子計畫能朝正
確方向發展這個表格的內容雖然不完整
不過卻能夠讓團隊的其他子計畫找到具體的
研究方向
表一廚房功能的分類
基本機能 所需設備 豪華功
能
U 化功
能 1 烹飪
炒鍋平
鍋湯鍋
壓力鍋
悶燒鍋
電鍋
微波爐
烤箱
爐台
料理台
調味料架
切具鉆
板
除油煙機
預約煮
飯功能
選擇
自動斷
電安全
裝置
節能爐
頭熄火
安全裝
置
旋轉式
吸力
連線控
制啟動
煮飯
計算卡
路里
依油煙
大小切
換吸力
強靜音
馬達過
熱保護
裝置 2 用餐
餐桌
餐椅
兒童餐椅
可摺疊
或延伸
人體工
學
可調整
高度
量體重
3 喝飲
料
飲水機
咖啡壺
濾水器
自動加
熱無水
斷電
自動煮
咖啡機
定期更
換濾心
顯示
4 清潔 洗槽
吸塵器 除塵洗
地機器
人
5 溝通
聊天
舒適
吧台
吧台椅
冷氣
預約開
關
留言記
事家事
管理
恆溫 6 收納 烘碗機
櫥櫃
碗櫃
電器櫃
洗乾
儲藏一
體
防火材
質關門
緩衝無
接縫防
蟲鋼琴
烤漆可
調高度
腳
迴路插
7
座 7 儲藏 冰箱
垃圾桶
廚餘桶
資源回收
筒
變頻恆
溫抑菌
感應開
啟
密閉鐵
胃堆肥
製造
庫存管
理訂貨
根據前面的參考文獻以及對照表一整
理的資料團隊決定將冰箱虛擬互動窗戶
無線燈光控制系統餐桌椅等予與 U 化分
別由子計畫二三四來研製這裡所謂的
U 化是將功能提升到「無所不在的服務」
例如餐桌上可以看到冰箱的資訊再如
餐桌上可以觀看房子內所有電燈的開關狀
態當然也可以由餐桌直接關閉電燈讓
隨手關燈變得更容易就算一時忘記也可
以很容易補救真正達到省能的目標而既
然是無所不在的服務餐桌上有的功能冰
箱上樣樣不能少因此大量的資訊將在網
路線上流動也因此需要一個子計畫專門幫
團隊開發與管理網路這就是子計畫五mdash網
路信息整合中心
由於無線網路系統在家庭的應用有日漸
普及的趨勢其中又以 ZigBee 最被看好而
既然是無線傳輸天線的設計就變得非常重
要天線做得好就有可能在不影響信號品
質的情況下將打到人體的電磁波盡量降
低讓無線網路的使用變得更健康子計畫
六的工作就是要設計並實現團隊所需的天
線只是電腦與通訊系或者說崑山科技
大學目前尚缺電磁波的無反射室對於天線
設計而言還是有些不方便其會影響到設計
天線的效率因此總計畫預定在第二年購
置電磁波的無反射室
三期中進度
專家說過想要工程師設計出可用的產
品必須先給他環境去體驗為了讓本研究
團隊創造出亮麗的成果本計畫取得本校「優
質家庭生活科技(u-Home)之關鍵技術特色發
展計畫」研究團隊的同意將本計畫研發所
需的基礎建設進駐到 u-Home 裡面如圖 2所
示為本校 u-Home 現在的客廳與廚房未來將
會配合本計畫的研究將客廳和廚房予與整
合也就是將兩者的地板改裝成同一水平
並且採用智慧建築觀念讓地板成為模組
化以利研究團隊架設與改變管線以及變
化餐桌椅與灶台之配置等等
圖 2崑山科技大學 u-Home 之客廳與廚房
本計畫共包含七個子計畫其中子計畫一
為本計畫的先鋒部隊負責研究與調查使用
者之需求以提供正確的研究方向給其他子
計畫參考是本期(計畫一開始的前半年)計
畫最重要的成果今將子計畫一的研究結果
說明如下
31 使用者需求分析(子計畫一期中成果)
本研究主要是根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
8
本中進行重要與需求程度分析並藉由圖 3
至 圖7之散佈圖區分不同平均得分屬性的相
對位置進一步提出實用的建議與特定功能
屬性的策略應用
圖 3 安全功能之散佈圖
由上圖 3可發現
1 用電過載警示瓦斯安全孩童靠近
熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒童安全設計瓦斯爐
具設定時裝置熄火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
其優先性最低設計者可以先不要放入太多
心力與資源
圖 4 健康功能之散佈圖
由上圖 4可發現
1 透過電腦營養系統依照不同狀況與
疾病提供餐飲建議家中老年人可使用事件
備忘系統等功能落於第一象限代表這些功
能是填答者認為既重要又有需求的可做為
設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱溫度
異常落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能
是需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有
未來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行
銷喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市
場
3 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
較不具優先性
圖 5 節能功能之散佈圖
由上圖 5可發現
1 透過電腦或手機監視家中資訊家電
狀況透過網路打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱門
未關緊透過電腦顯示廚房使用電量等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 在任何房間內可以操控其他房間或
走道上之電燈功能落於第四象限代表填答
者認為此功能是需求程度高但重要程度低
的此功能具有未來發展的決定性關鍵因
素將來可以以行銷喚起消費者的重視獲
取更多的消費者市場
3 出門在外可以透過網路操控家中燈
光系統透過電腦或手機控制各房間的溫度
9
及亮度等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者
認為重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可
將其列為較不重要的設計項目
圖 6 便利功能之散佈圖
由上圖 6可發現
1 廚房中互動螢幕可直接撥出與接聽
電話廚房中互動螢幕可與門口外面的人做
影像通訊與開門的動作等功能落於第一象
限代表這些功能是填答者認為既重要又有
需求的可做為設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過互動螢幕可以手寫方式快速留
言落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能是
需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有未
來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行銷
喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市場
3 透過電腦或手機查詢冰箱及櫥櫃之
食品數量與保存期限透過互動系統與遠方
之家人共進晚餐和聊天等功能落於第三象
限這些是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低
之功能設計者可將其列為較不重要的設計
項目
圖 7 舒適功能之散佈圖
由上圖 7可發現
1 餐椅可自動歸位讓使用者方便整理
與餐椅可識別使用者身分調整到舒適坐姿兩
功能落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者
認為既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計
之重要參考
2 透過餐桌自動顯示使用者的電子郵
件與行事曆智慧桌具有休閒娛樂的功能
智慧桌具有自動排版功能智慧桌具有互動
的功能易與遠方作資訊交換或玩互動式遊
戲等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者認為
重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可依序
參考其優先性作為規劃設計的參考
32 其他子計畫之期中成果
根據子計畫一之研究結果其餘各子計畫
之期中進度可以簡要說明如下
(1) 子計畫二之期中成果
子計畫二目前已經完成的工作如下
RFID 系統設備的選型與測試
冰箱與櫥櫃內部 RFID 天線的設計與佈
署
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之嵌入式系統的建
立
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之觸控式面板的建
立
(2) 子計畫三之期中成果
本子計畫分為互動魔法窗廚房安全以
及行為分析等三個研究方向其中使用超音
波感測觀察者位置並且操作遠端 IPcam 的部
份已經完成雛形並且已經撰寫成論文而被
INCN09 國際研討會接受
用電安全方面目前已經完成插座使用電
量偵測電路可以監控到 1500 W 的用電量
並且可以在用電過載時發出警報甚至切斷
插座電源
行為分析方面目前已完成由監視攝影機
影像追蹤廚房中人員使用者不需穿戴任
何感應裝置
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
6
RFID智慧型影音冰箱及櫥櫃系統之研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧感知之互動家庭環境控制系統的研製
電腦與通訊系
智慧型健康餐桌椅的設計與實現
視訊傳播系電腦與通訊系
總計畫 以U化廚房為中心之優質住宅的設計與實現
智慧化廚房的使用者需求心理知覺與滿意度分析
不動產經營系企業管理系
子計畫一
子計畫二 子計畫三 子計畫四
射頻天線與收發機系統的設計與實現
電腦與通訊系
子計畫六
網路訊息整合中心的研製
電腦與通訊系
子計畫五
智慧型營養與食物管理平台
崑山資科院成大醫院
子計畫七
圖 1總計畫與子計畫的關連圖
另外為了能夠在有限人力下發揮最大效
用子計畫一也幫團隊收集並規劃出一些廚
房常見的器具或功能並且將這些功能分為
基本機能豪華功能以及 U 化功能等三個
等級如表一所示以便其他子計畫能朝正
確方向發展這個表格的內容雖然不完整
不過卻能夠讓團隊的其他子計畫找到具體的
研究方向
表一廚房功能的分類
基本機能 所需設備 豪華功
能
U 化功
能 1 烹飪
炒鍋平
鍋湯鍋
壓力鍋
悶燒鍋
電鍋
微波爐
烤箱
爐台
料理台
調味料架
切具鉆
板
除油煙機
預約煮
飯功能
選擇
自動斷
電安全
裝置
節能爐
頭熄火
安全裝
置
旋轉式
吸力
連線控
制啟動
煮飯
計算卡
路里
依油煙
大小切
換吸力
強靜音
馬達過
熱保護
裝置 2 用餐
餐桌
餐椅
兒童餐椅
可摺疊
或延伸
人體工
學
可調整
高度
量體重
3 喝飲
料
飲水機
咖啡壺
濾水器
自動加
熱無水
斷電
自動煮
咖啡機
定期更
換濾心
顯示
4 清潔 洗槽
吸塵器 除塵洗
地機器
人
5 溝通
聊天
舒適
吧台
吧台椅
冷氣
預約開
關
留言記
事家事
管理
恆溫 6 收納 烘碗機
櫥櫃
碗櫃
電器櫃
洗乾
儲藏一
體
防火材
質關門
緩衝無
接縫防
蟲鋼琴
烤漆可
調高度
腳
迴路插
7
座 7 儲藏 冰箱
垃圾桶
廚餘桶
資源回收
筒
變頻恆
溫抑菌
感應開
啟
密閉鐵
胃堆肥
製造
庫存管
理訂貨
根據前面的參考文獻以及對照表一整
理的資料團隊決定將冰箱虛擬互動窗戶
無線燈光控制系統餐桌椅等予與 U 化分
別由子計畫二三四來研製這裡所謂的
U 化是將功能提升到「無所不在的服務」
例如餐桌上可以看到冰箱的資訊再如
餐桌上可以觀看房子內所有電燈的開關狀
態當然也可以由餐桌直接關閉電燈讓
隨手關燈變得更容易就算一時忘記也可
以很容易補救真正達到省能的目標而既
然是無所不在的服務餐桌上有的功能冰
箱上樣樣不能少因此大量的資訊將在網
路線上流動也因此需要一個子計畫專門幫
團隊開發與管理網路這就是子計畫五mdash網
路信息整合中心
由於無線網路系統在家庭的應用有日漸
普及的趨勢其中又以 ZigBee 最被看好而
既然是無線傳輸天線的設計就變得非常重
要天線做得好就有可能在不影響信號品
質的情況下將打到人體的電磁波盡量降
低讓無線網路的使用變得更健康子計畫
六的工作就是要設計並實現團隊所需的天
線只是電腦與通訊系或者說崑山科技
大學目前尚缺電磁波的無反射室對於天線
設計而言還是有些不方便其會影響到設計
天線的效率因此總計畫預定在第二年購
置電磁波的無反射室
三期中進度
專家說過想要工程師設計出可用的產
品必須先給他環境去體驗為了讓本研究
團隊創造出亮麗的成果本計畫取得本校「優
質家庭生活科技(u-Home)之關鍵技術特色發
展計畫」研究團隊的同意將本計畫研發所
需的基礎建設進駐到 u-Home 裡面如圖 2所
示為本校 u-Home 現在的客廳與廚房未來將
會配合本計畫的研究將客廳和廚房予與整
合也就是將兩者的地板改裝成同一水平
並且採用智慧建築觀念讓地板成為模組
化以利研究團隊架設與改變管線以及變
化餐桌椅與灶台之配置等等
圖 2崑山科技大學 u-Home 之客廳與廚房
本計畫共包含七個子計畫其中子計畫一
為本計畫的先鋒部隊負責研究與調查使用
者之需求以提供正確的研究方向給其他子
計畫參考是本期(計畫一開始的前半年)計
畫最重要的成果今將子計畫一的研究結果
說明如下
31 使用者需求分析(子計畫一期中成果)
本研究主要是根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
8
本中進行重要與需求程度分析並藉由圖 3
至 圖7之散佈圖區分不同平均得分屬性的相
對位置進一步提出實用的建議與特定功能
屬性的策略應用
圖 3 安全功能之散佈圖
由上圖 3可發現
1 用電過載警示瓦斯安全孩童靠近
熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒童安全設計瓦斯爐
具設定時裝置熄火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
其優先性最低設計者可以先不要放入太多
心力與資源
圖 4 健康功能之散佈圖
由上圖 4可發現
1 透過電腦營養系統依照不同狀況與
疾病提供餐飲建議家中老年人可使用事件
備忘系統等功能落於第一象限代表這些功
能是填答者認為既重要又有需求的可做為
設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱溫度
異常落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能
是需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有
未來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行
銷喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市
場
3 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
較不具優先性
圖 5 節能功能之散佈圖
由上圖 5可發現
1 透過電腦或手機監視家中資訊家電
狀況透過網路打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱門
未關緊透過電腦顯示廚房使用電量等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 在任何房間內可以操控其他房間或
走道上之電燈功能落於第四象限代表填答
者認為此功能是需求程度高但重要程度低
的此功能具有未來發展的決定性關鍵因
素將來可以以行銷喚起消費者的重視獲
取更多的消費者市場
3 出門在外可以透過網路操控家中燈
光系統透過電腦或手機控制各房間的溫度
9
及亮度等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者
認為重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可
將其列為較不重要的設計項目
圖 6 便利功能之散佈圖
由上圖 6可發現
1 廚房中互動螢幕可直接撥出與接聽
電話廚房中互動螢幕可與門口外面的人做
影像通訊與開門的動作等功能落於第一象
限代表這些功能是填答者認為既重要又有
需求的可做為設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過互動螢幕可以手寫方式快速留
言落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能是
需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有未
來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行銷
喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市場
3 透過電腦或手機查詢冰箱及櫥櫃之
食品數量與保存期限透過互動系統與遠方
之家人共進晚餐和聊天等功能落於第三象
限這些是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低
之功能設計者可將其列為較不重要的設計
項目
圖 7 舒適功能之散佈圖
由上圖 7可發現
1 餐椅可自動歸位讓使用者方便整理
與餐椅可識別使用者身分調整到舒適坐姿兩
功能落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者
認為既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計
之重要參考
2 透過餐桌自動顯示使用者的電子郵
件與行事曆智慧桌具有休閒娛樂的功能
智慧桌具有自動排版功能智慧桌具有互動
的功能易與遠方作資訊交換或玩互動式遊
戲等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者認為
重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可依序
參考其優先性作為規劃設計的參考
32 其他子計畫之期中成果
根據子計畫一之研究結果其餘各子計畫
之期中進度可以簡要說明如下
(1) 子計畫二之期中成果
子計畫二目前已經完成的工作如下
RFID 系統設備的選型與測試
冰箱與櫥櫃內部 RFID 天線的設計與佈
署
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之嵌入式系統的建
立
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之觸控式面板的建
立
(2) 子計畫三之期中成果
本子計畫分為互動魔法窗廚房安全以
及行為分析等三個研究方向其中使用超音
波感測觀察者位置並且操作遠端 IPcam 的部
份已經完成雛形並且已經撰寫成論文而被
INCN09 國際研討會接受
用電安全方面目前已經完成插座使用電
量偵測電路可以監控到 1500 W 的用電量
並且可以在用電過載時發出警報甚至切斷
插座電源
行為分析方面目前已完成由監視攝影機
影像追蹤廚房中人員使用者不需穿戴任
何感應裝置
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
7
座 7 儲藏 冰箱
垃圾桶
廚餘桶
資源回收
筒
變頻恆
溫抑菌
感應開
啟
密閉鐵
胃堆肥
製造
庫存管
理訂貨
根據前面的參考文獻以及對照表一整
理的資料團隊決定將冰箱虛擬互動窗戶
無線燈光控制系統餐桌椅等予與 U 化分
別由子計畫二三四來研製這裡所謂的
U 化是將功能提升到「無所不在的服務」
例如餐桌上可以看到冰箱的資訊再如
餐桌上可以觀看房子內所有電燈的開關狀
態當然也可以由餐桌直接關閉電燈讓
隨手關燈變得更容易就算一時忘記也可
以很容易補救真正達到省能的目標而既
然是無所不在的服務餐桌上有的功能冰
箱上樣樣不能少因此大量的資訊將在網
路線上流動也因此需要一個子計畫專門幫
團隊開發與管理網路這就是子計畫五mdash網
路信息整合中心
由於無線網路系統在家庭的應用有日漸
普及的趨勢其中又以 ZigBee 最被看好而
既然是無線傳輸天線的設計就變得非常重
要天線做得好就有可能在不影響信號品
質的情況下將打到人體的電磁波盡量降
低讓無線網路的使用變得更健康子計畫
六的工作就是要設計並實現團隊所需的天
線只是電腦與通訊系或者說崑山科技
大學目前尚缺電磁波的無反射室對於天線
設計而言還是有些不方便其會影響到設計
天線的效率因此總計畫預定在第二年購
置電磁波的無反射室
三期中進度
專家說過想要工程師設計出可用的產
品必須先給他環境去體驗為了讓本研究
團隊創造出亮麗的成果本計畫取得本校「優
質家庭生活科技(u-Home)之關鍵技術特色發
展計畫」研究團隊的同意將本計畫研發所
需的基礎建設進駐到 u-Home 裡面如圖 2所
示為本校 u-Home 現在的客廳與廚房未來將
會配合本計畫的研究將客廳和廚房予與整
合也就是將兩者的地板改裝成同一水平
並且採用智慧建築觀念讓地板成為模組
化以利研究團隊架設與改變管線以及變
化餐桌椅與灶台之配置等等
圖 2崑山科技大學 u-Home 之客廳與廚房
本計畫共包含七個子計畫其中子計畫一
為本計畫的先鋒部隊負責研究與調查使用
者之需求以提供正確的研究方向給其他子
計畫參考是本期(計畫一開始的前半年)計
畫最重要的成果今將子計畫一的研究結果
說明如下
31 使用者需求分析(子計畫一期中成果)
本研究主要是根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
8
本中進行重要與需求程度分析並藉由圖 3
至 圖7之散佈圖區分不同平均得分屬性的相
對位置進一步提出實用的建議與特定功能
屬性的策略應用
圖 3 安全功能之散佈圖
由上圖 3可發現
1 用電過載警示瓦斯安全孩童靠近
熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒童安全設計瓦斯爐
具設定時裝置熄火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
其優先性最低設計者可以先不要放入太多
心力與資源
圖 4 健康功能之散佈圖
由上圖 4可發現
1 透過電腦營養系統依照不同狀況與
疾病提供餐飲建議家中老年人可使用事件
備忘系統等功能落於第一象限代表這些功
能是填答者認為既重要又有需求的可做為
設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱溫度
異常落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能
是需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有
未來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行
銷喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市
場
3 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
較不具優先性
圖 5 節能功能之散佈圖
由上圖 5可發現
1 透過電腦或手機監視家中資訊家電
狀況透過網路打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱門
未關緊透過電腦顯示廚房使用電量等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 在任何房間內可以操控其他房間或
走道上之電燈功能落於第四象限代表填答
者認為此功能是需求程度高但重要程度低
的此功能具有未來發展的決定性關鍵因
素將來可以以行銷喚起消費者的重視獲
取更多的消費者市場
3 出門在外可以透過網路操控家中燈
光系統透過電腦或手機控制各房間的溫度
9
及亮度等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者
認為重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可
將其列為較不重要的設計項目
圖 6 便利功能之散佈圖
由上圖 6可發現
1 廚房中互動螢幕可直接撥出與接聽
電話廚房中互動螢幕可與門口外面的人做
影像通訊與開門的動作等功能落於第一象
限代表這些功能是填答者認為既重要又有
需求的可做為設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過互動螢幕可以手寫方式快速留
言落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能是
需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有未
來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行銷
喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市場
3 透過電腦或手機查詢冰箱及櫥櫃之
食品數量與保存期限透過互動系統與遠方
之家人共進晚餐和聊天等功能落於第三象
限這些是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低
之功能設計者可將其列為較不重要的設計
項目
圖 7 舒適功能之散佈圖
由上圖 7可發現
1 餐椅可自動歸位讓使用者方便整理
與餐椅可識別使用者身分調整到舒適坐姿兩
功能落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者
認為既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計
之重要參考
2 透過餐桌自動顯示使用者的電子郵
件與行事曆智慧桌具有休閒娛樂的功能
智慧桌具有自動排版功能智慧桌具有互動
的功能易與遠方作資訊交換或玩互動式遊
戲等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者認為
重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可依序
參考其優先性作為規劃設計的參考
32 其他子計畫之期中成果
根據子計畫一之研究結果其餘各子計畫
之期中進度可以簡要說明如下
(1) 子計畫二之期中成果
子計畫二目前已經完成的工作如下
RFID 系統設備的選型與測試
冰箱與櫥櫃內部 RFID 天線的設計與佈
署
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之嵌入式系統的建
立
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之觸控式面板的建
立
(2) 子計畫三之期中成果
本子計畫分為互動魔法窗廚房安全以
及行為分析等三個研究方向其中使用超音
波感測觀察者位置並且操作遠端 IPcam 的部
份已經完成雛形並且已經撰寫成論文而被
INCN09 國際研討會接受
用電安全方面目前已經完成插座使用電
量偵測電路可以監控到 1500 W 的用電量
並且可以在用電過載時發出警報甚至切斷
插座電源
行為分析方面目前已完成由監視攝影機
影像追蹤廚房中人員使用者不需穿戴任
何感應裝置
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
8
本中進行重要與需求程度分析並藉由圖 3
至 圖7之散佈圖區分不同平均得分屬性的相
對位置進一步提出實用的建議與特定功能
屬性的策略應用
圖 3 安全功能之散佈圖
由上圖 3可發現
1 用電過載警示瓦斯安全孩童靠近
熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒童安全設計瓦斯爐
具設定時裝置熄火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
其優先性最低設計者可以先不要放入太多
心力與資源
圖 4 健康功能之散佈圖
由上圖 4可發現
1 透過電腦營養系統依照不同狀況與
疾病提供餐飲建議家中老年人可使用事件
備忘系統等功能落於第一象限代表這些功
能是填答者認為既重要又有需求的可做為
設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱溫度
異常落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能
是需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有
未來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行
銷喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市
場
3 透過互動螢幕與小孩進行互動地板
潮濕警示櫥櫃加強兒童安全設計需先開
啟抽油煙機才可開啟瓦斯開關透過電話簡
訊告知瓦斯外洩等功能落於第三象限這些
是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低之功能
較不具優先性
圖 5 節能功能之散佈圖
由上圖 5可發現
1 透過電腦或手機監視家中資訊家電
狀況透過網路打電話或傳簡訊告知冰箱門
未關緊透過電腦顯示廚房使用電量等功能
落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者認為
既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計之重
要參考
2 在任何房間內可以操控其他房間或
走道上之電燈功能落於第四象限代表填答
者認為此功能是需求程度高但重要程度低
的此功能具有未來發展的決定性關鍵因
素將來可以以行銷喚起消費者的重視獲
取更多的消費者市場
3 出門在外可以透過網路操控家中燈
光系統透過電腦或手機控制各房間的溫度
9
及亮度等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者
認為重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可
將其列為較不重要的設計項目
圖 6 便利功能之散佈圖
由上圖 6可發現
1 廚房中互動螢幕可直接撥出與接聽
電話廚房中互動螢幕可與門口外面的人做
影像通訊與開門的動作等功能落於第一象
限代表這些功能是填答者認為既重要又有
需求的可做為設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過互動螢幕可以手寫方式快速留
言落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能是
需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有未
來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行銷
喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市場
3 透過電腦或手機查詢冰箱及櫥櫃之
食品數量與保存期限透過互動系統與遠方
之家人共進晚餐和聊天等功能落於第三象
限這些是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低
之功能設計者可將其列為較不重要的設計
項目
圖 7 舒適功能之散佈圖
由上圖 7可發現
1 餐椅可自動歸位讓使用者方便整理
與餐椅可識別使用者身分調整到舒適坐姿兩
功能落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者
認為既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計
之重要參考
2 透過餐桌自動顯示使用者的電子郵
件與行事曆智慧桌具有休閒娛樂的功能
智慧桌具有自動排版功能智慧桌具有互動
的功能易與遠方作資訊交換或玩互動式遊
戲等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者認為
重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可依序
參考其優先性作為規劃設計的參考
32 其他子計畫之期中成果
根據子計畫一之研究結果其餘各子計畫
之期中進度可以簡要說明如下
(1) 子計畫二之期中成果
子計畫二目前已經完成的工作如下
RFID 系統設備的選型與測試
冰箱與櫥櫃內部 RFID 天線的設計與佈
署
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之嵌入式系統的建
立
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之觸控式面板的建
立
(2) 子計畫三之期中成果
本子計畫分為互動魔法窗廚房安全以
及行為分析等三個研究方向其中使用超音
波感測觀察者位置並且操作遠端 IPcam 的部
份已經完成雛形並且已經撰寫成論文而被
INCN09 國際研討會接受
用電安全方面目前已經完成插座使用電
量偵測電路可以監控到 1500 W 的用電量
並且可以在用電過載時發出警報甚至切斷
插座電源
行為分析方面目前已完成由監視攝影機
影像追蹤廚房中人員使用者不需穿戴任
何感應裝置
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
9
及亮度等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者
認為重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可
將其列為較不重要的設計項目
圖 6 便利功能之散佈圖
由上圖 6可發現
1 廚房中互動螢幕可直接撥出與接聽
電話廚房中互動螢幕可與門口外面的人做
影像通訊與開門的動作等功能落於第一象
限代表這些功能是填答者認為既重要又有
需求的可做為設計者設計之重要參考
2 透過互動螢幕可以手寫方式快速留
言落於第四象限代表填答者認為此功能是
需求程度高但重要程度低的此功能具有未
來發展的決定性關鍵因素將來可以以行銷
喚起消費者的重視獲取更多的消費者市場
3 透過電腦或手機查詢冰箱及櫥櫃之
食品數量與保存期限透過互動系統與遠方
之家人共進晚餐和聊天等功能落於第三象
限這些是填答者認為重要與需求程度較低
之功能設計者可將其列為較不重要的設計
項目
圖 7 舒適功能之散佈圖
由上圖 7可發現
1 餐椅可自動歸位讓使用者方便整理
與餐椅可識別使用者身分調整到舒適坐姿兩
功能落於第一象限代表這些功能是填答者
認為既重要又有需求的可做為設計者設計
之重要參考
2 透過餐桌自動顯示使用者的電子郵
件與行事曆智慧桌具有休閒娛樂的功能
智慧桌具有自動排版功能智慧桌具有互動
的功能易與遠方作資訊交換或玩互動式遊
戲等功能落於第三象限這些是填答者認為
重要與需求程度較低之功能設計者可依序
參考其優先性作為規劃設計的參考
32 其他子計畫之期中成果
根據子計畫一之研究結果其餘各子計畫
之期中進度可以簡要說明如下
(1) 子計畫二之期中成果
子計畫二目前已經完成的工作如下
RFID 系統設備的選型與測試
冰箱與櫥櫃內部 RFID 天線的設計與佈
署
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之嵌入式系統的建
立
冰箱與櫥櫃所使用之觸控式面板的建
立
(2) 子計畫三之期中成果
本子計畫分為互動魔法窗廚房安全以
及行為分析等三個研究方向其中使用超音
波感測觀察者位置並且操作遠端 IPcam 的部
份已經完成雛形並且已經撰寫成論文而被
INCN09 國際研討會接受
用電安全方面目前已經完成插座使用電
量偵測電路可以監控到 1500 W 的用電量
並且可以在用電過載時發出警報甚至切斷
插座電源
行為分析方面目前已完成由監視攝影機
影像追蹤廚房中人員使用者不需穿戴任
何感應裝置
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
10
(3) 子計畫四之期中成果
學齡兒童在用餐時間上往往是家長頭痛
的問題兒童處於好奇心旺盛的時期為了
讓兒童能樂意在餐桌用餐因此本子計畫開
發在智慧桌上開發觸控式互動音樂遊戲遊
戲特色是透過觸控方式當手指通過畫面感
應區時感應區內的動物就會跳躍並發出
叫聲及所代表的音階聲音當用餐時間到
家長只要按下中央的圖示餐桌就會自動播
放音樂告訴小孩該吃飯了在用餐過程中
只要碰觸到畫面的感應區感應區內的動
物就會發出聲音來當音樂的伴奏讓小動
物陪伴小孩用餐增加小孩願意坐在餐桌的
意願並培養小孩音樂能力的養成及常見
動物的認識
另外本子計畫之『餐桌顯示規劃模組之
開發』目前已完成演算法之設計待桌面偵
測模組完成即可串聯起來測試而基於此技
術之上的『餐桌媒體訂閱應用』已完成初步
XML parser 以及簡單顯示正與上述『餐桌
顯示規劃模組』串連測試
(4) 子計畫五之期中成果
目前本子計畫擬採用 OSGi 作為『網路訊息整
合中心』的幾楚平台並且已完成 OSGi 平台
之安裝與測試雛型系統架構目前正在規劃
設計中
網路訊息整合中心的另一項重點是要規劃設
計一個標準的網路訊息交換格式與流程讓
各種應用得以互相溝通與串聯應用本計畫
擬採用已被廣為使用在描述資料的 XML 格
式此一格式有容易閱讀與除錯容易擴充
極有彈性等特色特別適用於家庭網路的資
料交換因此將以此作為訊息交換標準一
個簡單的範例如下表
表二 XML 訊息交換範例
ltxml version=10 encoding=ldquobig5gt
ltdevice id=ldquo41ab6gt
ltnamegt檯燈ltnamegt
lttypegtLightlttypegt
ltlocationgt書房ltlocationgt
ltstatusgtONltstatusgt
helliphelliphellip
ltdevicegt
(5) 子計畫六之期中成果
本研究的第一年將針對放置於冰箱內的
Reader 天線的增益大小和極化程度對於貼
在食物上 tag 的讀取率的影響程度來進行探
討本研究運用超高頻 UHF RFID 技術建立一
個智慧型冰箱系統並將研究聚焦於 tag 讀
取率的問題因為 100的讀取率才會使用者
放心的採用 RFID 的冰箱首先以 2 支 UHF
dipole 天線來進行讀取率的測試發現天線
放置的位置不同會影響讀取率本研究想作
到以一支天線就能完全讀取冰箱內部30個標
籤的目標進行研發偶極的雙頻天線單頻
天線以及陣列天線從不同的增益和極化比
例來了解如何提高讀取率進而作到 100的
絕對讀取率
UHF RFID 智慧型冰箱的硬體部分除了冰
箱本身外就是RFID Reader和 UHF天線與UHF
Tag本研究將 30 張 Tags 均勻放置於空冰箱
的冷凍室及冷藏室內並將冰箱分成上中
下三層以便區分在開發系統的過程中
先以1支雙頻偶極天線為Reader天線進行測
試以找到最佳位置經過多次的實驗目
前已可找出最佳的讀取位置將一支天線放
置在這個最佳讀取位置讀取 Tag 時會有部分
的 Tag 沒有辦法被讀取到可能是因為增益
不足或 Reader 天線的極化與 tag 天線的極
化不能作到很好的匹配所以增加到 2 支雙
頻天線來作到 100讀取平均分散的 30 個
Tags
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
11
(6) 子計畫七之期中成果
本子計畫在本期的成果可以摘要說明如
下
食物資料庫收集(台灣日本美國中
國) 收集台灣日本美國中國食材
並做食物營養成分之分析
食物資料庫建檔 將分析完成的食材將
其營養成份做資料庫建檔
電子式秤重砧板 將砧板與秤重計作結
合並獲得食物的重量以利於食材之分
析
四結論
本計畫為三年期計畫本報告說明計畫執
行第一年的前半年之成果工作重點是由子
計畫一研究調查使用者需求以作為其他子
計畫研究的參考根據回收之 1000 份有效樣
本中進行重要與需求程度分析可以得到
下列結論
在安全功能方面用電過載警示瓦斯
安全孩童靠近熱湯警示瓦斯加強兒
童安全設計瓦斯爐具設定時裝置熄
火時自動切斷瓦斯等功能為既重要又有
需求
在節能功能方面透過電腦或手機監視
家中資訊家電狀況透過網路打電話或
傳簡訊告知冰箱門未關緊透過電腦顯
示廚房使用電量等功能為既重要又有需
求
在便利功能方面廚房中互動螢幕可直
接撥出與接聽電話廚房中互動螢幕可
與門口外面的人做影像通訊與開門的動
作等功能為既重要又有需求
在舒適功能方面餐椅可自動歸位讓使
用者方便整理與餐椅可識別使用者身分
調整到舒適坐姿兩功能為既重要又有需
求
除了子計畫一已經有了非常具體的成果
之外總計畫與其他子計畫在設備建立與先
期研究工作方面也都順利的進行都符合計
畫書中預定的工作進度
五參考資料
[1] httpwwwimtcgatecheduprojectsar
chivesgesture_phtml [2] httpwwwawarehomegatecheduproj
ectsMemory_Mirrorpdf [3] httpwwwccgatechedufceeclprojec
tsdfpindexhtml [4] httpwwwcscoloradoedu~mozerho
use [5] httpwwwmediamiteduresenvTapp
er [6] httpwwwlivinglabs-europecom [7] 楊家輝 ldquo歐盟生活實驗室 生活科技
之研究新觀念rdquo HUC2007 invited talk (2) 200711
[8] httpwwwnckuedutw~artctr2007_06ecko-0615ecko-0615htm
[9] 林 一 平 ldquoU-Homerdquo HUC2007 keynote speak 200711
[10] 郭耀煌 ldquo數位家庭科技之發展與應
用rdquo 2006 年數位家庭生活科技研討
會書面資料 專題演講(一) 崑山科
技大學 台南 200612 [11] httpwwwksuedutw [12] httpwww2pccuedutwCRTlablab
html [13] httpwwws2h-homeorginsightindex
html [14] http140110181218080eco-city [15] httptouchnckuedutwtouch [16] httppanasoniccojpeuhouseen [17] httpwwwu-dreamorkr
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告
98 年 9 月 23 日
報告人姓名 盧春林
服務機構
及職稱
崑山科技大學電通系 教授
時間 會議
地點
980910-980916
日本京都 本會核定
補助文號
NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
會議
名稱
(中文) 2009 智慧資訊穩藏與多媒體信號處理國際研討會
(英文) The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information
Hidingand Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP-2009)
發表 論文 題目
(中文) 應用於家庭自動化之互動式語音控制器
(英文) Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容 五其 他
附件三
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
表 Y04 2
一 參加會議經過
IIHMSP 是一個屬於資訊安全以及信號處理的國際研討會每一年舉辦一
次會議今年是第 5 次舉辦地點選在日本的古都--京都本次研討會投稿論文
來自 25 個國家地區共有 410 篇最後共接受 326 篇論文接受率為 795
我在 910 出發912 參加大會開幕聽 keynote speak以及發表論文
913 除了聆聽論文發表也參加大會晚宴晚宴上認識不少來自不同國家的學
者可以說是不虛此行由於原訂的回國時間也就是研討會結束的隔天 915
買不到回程的機票因此在日本多停留一天而有機會去參觀日本的古都像
是金閣寺東大寺明石大橋等等對於日本的文化與建設都有深刻的印象
值得一提的是第一天的 keynote speak是由京都大學副校長(Vice president of
Kyoto University) Takashi Matsuyama 教授演講題目是 The State of the Art of
3D Video Technologies - Accurate 3D Shape and Motion Reconstruction
High Fidelity Visualization and Efficient Coding for 3D Video主講者常常穿插
影片或者是當場操作其研發成功之 3D 立體影像讓人印象深刻
大會主席主持開幕典禮
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
表 Y04 3
Keynote speak 精彩的演講
和大會創辦人潘正祥教授在會場合影
在 session room 與看板合影
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
表 Y04 4
二 與會心得
本次的 IIHMSP國際研討會上本人的論文題目是 Interactive Voice-Controller
Applied to Home Automation被安排在第一天下午的 400 發表同一場次發表
的論文還有來自新加坡的馬教授以及中國大陸等不同國家的學者除了將
自己論文的貢獻加以說明之外也吸收到別人的論文優點其中以來自新加
坡的馬教授最為精彩馬教授是台灣人去美國留學之後轉往新加坡南洋理
工大學任教論文發表會之後都可用中文交流他也是大會工作團隊的成員
之一負責主持最佳論文獎的頒獎典禮
IIHMSP 是 IEEE 登錄的國際研討會被會議接受的論文都會收錄在 IEL
裡面本次出席國際研討會並發表論文的過程和許多海外學者交換研究心得
之後讓我的研究視野更加廣闊也讓我了解到國際研討會的必要性和重要性
當然參加國際研討會除了發表論文之外更重要的是可以藉由別人的論文發表
吸收到目前世界各大學最新的技術以及研究成果
三 建議
本次參加的 IIHMSP 研討會因為地緣關係日本學者的數量不少不過台
灣也有不少學者組織 invited session因此台灣的學者數量也算很多資訊安
全與多媒體影音處理在未來的生活科技中佔有非常重要的地位IIHMSP 是值得
參加的一個國際研討會對於執行 u-Kitchen 有很大的幫助只可惜明年要在德
國舉辦出差費將會是個嚴重的負擔可能就放棄一年等他又回到亞洲舉辦
的時候再繼續參加
四 攜回資料名稱及內容
1 研討會導覽一本 2 研討會全文光碟一片(包括所有子會議論文) 3 研討會節目行程表一本
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
Interactive Voice-Controller Applied to Home Automation
Jinn-Kwei Guo Chun-Lin Lu Ju-Yun Chang Yi-Jing Li Ya-Chi Huang Fu-Jiun Lu and Ching-Wen Hsu
Department of Computer and Communication Kun Shan University 710 Taiwan E-mail cllumailksuedutw
Abstract
This paper describes the application of the
embedded sound-controller SUNPLUS SPCE061A combined with Microchip 24GHz ZigBee modules in Home Automation Applying the speech recognition library provided by SUNPLUS we use a multi-stage algorithm to identify which one of the target home devices should take the corresponding operation The recognized control message is sent by the ZigBee module joined in the ZigBee network been routed and reached the home target device Due to the multi-stage recognition phases we can powerfully extend the capability of the original speech recognition library functions Finally some experiment results of an interactive voice-control lighting system demonstrate the facility the flexibility the scalability and the feasibility of our work 1 Introduction
For an easy life there are many various CE (Consumer Electronics) home appliances being controlled and managed with different control units based on IR (Infra Red) [1] On the other hand Home Automation in ZigBee network is an emerging technique in recent years Many home appliance manufactures are intended to control their products by ZigBee controllers RF4CE Consortium was founded by Panasonic Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corporation on June 12 2008 to address increased demand for advanced functionality not currently available through infrared or other proprietary wireless technologies RF4CE Consortium agreed to work with the ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls on March 3 2009 The ZigBee network is a candidate solution for home automation
Many remote control systems based on ZigBee
networks have been proposed in the literal Wan-Ki Park et al [1] developed a ZigBee based URC as the IR gateway of currently used home appliances A remote lighting control system based on the CC2430 solution was proposed by Maoheng Sun et Al [2] Their controller is made up of CC2430 PCB Antenna LCD panel and keyboard The user can use the keyboard to operate the menu displayed on the LCD Another PC based control software was designed to replace the hardware controller
Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung [3] designed the remote power onoff with current measurement outlets for the power managed system They used Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homersquos outlets The functions of the PC control software include the manual buttons the reports of control statuses and the real-time power consumption hellip etc
Unlike [1] using ZigBee controller and ZigBee to IR conversion module Jinsoo Han et al [4] proposed an automatic standby power cut-off outlet as a ZigBee end device for the energy-saving room architecture A ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality was responsible for communicate with the power outlets and the dimming light There are button switches on the controller to manually operate the respective outlets and the dimming light After the ZigBee controller learned the IR codes from a conventional IR controller the user can press the button on the IR controller to wake up the respective appliance
Generally there are many control units in our home The total number of the buttons on all the control units is more than one hundred It is too complex to be operated well Our elders children even disabled persons may be confused by such a controller
In this paper we are interested in the replacement of the conventional control unit in the ZigBee network We developed a hand-held interactive voice controller instead of the LCD and keyboard The control scenario shown in Figure 1 is simple and easy For example
This paper is partly supported by NSC 97-3114-E-168 -001
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
when the user wants the light bulb in the living room to be switched on the user just needs to say ldquoliving-room light onrdquo The user speech is recognized and parsed by the proposed interactive voice-controller The control message is then sent to the ZigBee network to operate the corresponding light
Figure 1 The application scenario
2 System Architectures
The proposed interactive voice control system architecture is shown in Figure 2 The main components of the interactive voice-controller are the ZigBee module and the sound controller for voice recognition When the user speaks to the microphone the sound controller recognizes the words The recognized control message is then sent routed by the ZigBee network to the target ZigBee module The corresponding ZigBee module will actuate the connected appliance via the connected driver circuit The key hardware of the system is described as the follows
Figure 2 System architecture
21 Sound Controller
SUNPLUS SPCE061A is used for speech recognition in our interactive voice-controller The sound controller has a build-in AGC microphone amplifier The memory word is 16-bit wide The 32k-word of flash memory is addressed from 0x8000 to 0xFFFF and the 2k-word working SRAM is addressed from 0x0000 to 0x07FF
We use the compact mini-61A module as shown in Figure 3 in our experiments SUNPLUS Company also provided a speech recognition software library
called BSR library which can recognize up to 5 speech words The BSR voice model extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech word and stored them into a SRAM buffer As the result there are 500 memory words in mini-61A to store these feature coefficients
Figure 3 The voice recognition module mini-61A
22 ZigBee Module
The ZigBee module is a modification version of
Microchip PICDEM Z 24GHz as shown in Figure 4 The layout of the main board is carefully designed to fit the space of the handheld unit PIC18F4620 microcontroller is still used in the main board to take the advantage of easy migration of the ZigBee source code offered by Microchip An 802154 compliance 24 GHz transceiver module of Microchip is attached on the top of the main board to complete the ZigBee module
Figure 4 The implemented ZigBee module
23 Driver Circuits The driver circuit is necessary in the appliance
end of the system Comparing to the ZigBee module used in the handheld unit a solid-state relay (SSR) and a power supply module are added as shown in Figure 5 The SSR is controlled by ZigBee module and then actuate the connected appliance Totally three test sets are implemented in experiments as shown in Figure 6
Figure 5 The driver circuit with ZigBee module
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
Figure 6 Three ZigBee light controller
3 Software Implementations
As mentioned in Section 1 the light bulb in the living room is switched on if the user says ldquoliving-room light onrdquo to the voice-controller The voice phrase consists of three parts eg the location the device and the operation We define the command triplet as a command consists of three sub-commands The first sub-command is the location command such as the living room the bedroom hellip etc The second is the device command which is the target device to be controlled such as the light TV hellip etc The last sub-command is the operation command such as on off increase decrease hellip etc Followings are some legal examples of command triplets
(Living-room light on) (Bedroom TV volume up) (All light off) Due to the limitation of BSR library only 5
speech words can be recognized There are many location device and operation sub-commands in our system In order to extend the recognition capacity of the BSR library we divided these words of sub-commands into several groups Each group contains up to 5 words Here we proposed two grouping methods in the following
The first grouping method is the simple one It follows the rule of ordinary command triplet Hence we have three ordinary groups eg the location group the device group and the operation group Additional groups may be followed to provide more operations
The second grouping method may have more than three groups The first group is the set of locations the same as method 1 The second group is the set of devices in the first location The third group is the set of devices in the second location The fourth group is the set of devices in the third location and so on Finally the last group is the operation group
The BSR library functions extracted 100 feature coefficients for each trained speech A maximum of 500 words of memory were required to store feature coefficients for each group There are only 32K words of flash memory in the sound controller We allocated the flash memory addressed from 0x8000 to 0xDFFF
for the execution code The storage of BSR feature coefficients is started from 0xE000 and separated from 500 memory words for each group Memory allocations in our implements are list in Table 1
Table 1 Flash memory allocations
Area Address Allocation 0 0x8000-0xDFFF execution codes 1 0xE000 Gourp 1 coefficients 2 0xE1F4 Gourp 2 coefficients 3 0xE3E8 Gourp 3 coefficients 4 0xE5DC Gourp 4 coefficients 5 0xE7D0 Gourp 5 coefficients 6 0xE9C4 Gourp 6 coefficients 7 0xEBB8 Gourp 7 coefficients Initially all the flash memory data are cleared
when the execution code is firstly programmed At the first time start of the sound controller the feature coefficients are empty in flash memory and the training algorithm is then executed If the feature coefficients are found (eg the 2nd start) the training algorithm is skip to enter the recognition procedure 31 Speech Training Procedure
The speech training procedure calls the BSR_Train() function in BSR library to get the speech feature coefficients The 100 coefficients of a speech word are stored in a SRAM buffer (ie the BSR_SDModel[] array) after the speech word was trained When 5 speech words in a group are already trained the coefficient buffer is full Then the 500 coefficients are saved to the flash memory allocated for that speech group The BSR_ExportSDWord( ) function is called to export the coefficients
A multi-stage training algorithm is used in the training procedure The speech words in one group are trained in one stage Speech words in groups are sequentially trained stage by stage When the training process is complete in each stage The coefficients are copied from the BSR_SDModel[] After all the speech words in all groups are trained the voice-controller can be applied to home automation
32 Speech Recognition Procedure
The speech recognition procedure calls the BSR_GetResult() function to identify the speech words Before the recognition process is started the speech feature coefficients in a group must be stored in the SRAM buffer The BSR_ImportSDWord() function is called to check if the BSR_SDModel[] is loaded successfully
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
When the user talks to the voice-controller the speech word is recognized A multi-stage algorithm is used in the recognition procedure The command triplet needs to be processed in multi-stages For example in grouping method 1 the feature coefficients of the location group are loaded into the SRAM buffer in the first stage After the speech word of location sub-command is identified the coefficients of the device group are loaded in the second stage Finally the operation group coefficients are loaded in the third stage
33 The Voice Interaction
The voice interaction is very important in complicate operation procedures Proper hints and responses in voice will make the user feel easy in the operations For the reason the controller not only must offer a hint before the user giving an oral command but also must answer the oral command perceptively Hence a lots of voice library such as ldquolocation namerdquo ldquopleaserdquo ldquoliving roomrdquo ldquolightrdquo ldquois recognizedrdquo hellip are built while the voice controller is programmed 4 Experiments
Using grouping method 1 we have implemented 4 groups of speech words as shown in Table 2 Group 1 is the location group plus two additional commands The ldquoAllrdquo command means the operation applied to all the devices selected in Group 2 For example the user could turn all the light off The ldquobackrdquo command abort the current stage and back to the previous stage Group 2 the device group has 3 devices Group 3 is the operation group The ldquocontinuerdquo command in Group 4 is designed to control the previously used target device For example after the ldquoBedroom Light Onrdquo is sent the user can say ldquoOffrdquo instead of ldquoBedroom Light Offrdquo In effect the ldquocontinuousrdquo command is the same as ldquobackrdquo Finally the ldquoendrdquo command stops the current operation and back to stage 1
Table 2 Implemented group commands Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4Living room TV On continueKitchen Light Off end Bedroom Air conditioning Increase All back Decrease back back
An example of the interactive scenario is
implemented as the following where VC states for voice controller VC ldquoLocation name pleaserdquo
User ldquoLiving roomrdquo VC ldquoLiving room is recognized Device name
pleaserdquo User ldquoLightrdquo VC ldquoLight is recognized Operation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOnrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is on now Continue or Endrdquo User ldquoContinuerdquo VC ldquoOperation name pleaserdquo User ldquoOffrdquo VC ldquoLiving room light is off now Continue or
Endrdquo User ldquoEndrdquo VC ldquoThank yourdquo 5 Conclusions
Based on the ZigBee network we proposed a voice control method applied to home automation in this paper The voice-controller composed of a sound controller and a ZigBee module plays the role of a user interface Using the interactive voice-controller the user can naturally and easily talk to the controller to control the home devices
The limited recognition capability provided by SUNPLUS Company is extended by the multi-stage algorithm This shows some scalability and feasibility of our algorithm
References [1] Wan-Ki Park Chang-Sic Choi Jinsoo Han and Intark
Han rdquoDesign and Implementation of ZigBee based URC Applicable to Legacy Home Appliancesrdquo IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2007) Irving TX June 20-23 2007 pp1-6
[2] Maoheng Sun Qian Liu and Min Jiang ldquoAn implementation of remote lighting control system based on ZigBee technology and SoC solutionrdquo International Conference on Audio Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) Shanghai July 7-9 2008 pp629 ndash 632
[3] Ying-Wen Bai and Chi-Huang Hung ldquoRemote power OnOff control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communicationrdquo International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE2008) Vilamoura April 14-16 2008 pp1-4
[4] Jinsoo Han Haeryong Lee and Kwang-Roh Park rdquo Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communicationrdquo IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics Vol55 No1 Feb 2009 pp264 ndash 268
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
1
行政院國家科學委員會補助國內專家學者出席國際學術會議報告 年 月 日
報告人姓名 陳淑美 服務機構及職稱
崑山科技大學
不動產經營系
教授兼系主任
980628-980701 時間
會議
地點 捷克布拉格
本會核定補助文號 NSC97-3114-E-168-001
會議名稱 中文2009 歐洲住宅聯盟研討會
英文2009 ENHR Conference
發表論文題目 (中文)智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之研究
(英文) On the extent of importance and demand of the smart kitchen
報告內容應包括下列各項
一參加會議經過
二與會心得
三建 議
四攜回資料名稱及內容
五其 他
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
2
一參加會議經過
歐洲住宅聯盟(The European Network for Housing Research)是由歐洲社會科學領
域的學者所組成每年舉辦研討會討論住宅及都市相關議題自 1988 年成立至今已有超
過 1000 明個人會員和 100 個團體會員ENHR 每年在不同國家舉辦研討會今年在捷克首
都布拉格經濟大學召開
因國科會專題研究計畫需要本人到布拉格參加第二十屆歐洲住宅聯盟國際學術研
討會6月28日參加大會安排的市區古蹟及住宅導覽當天下午參觀郊區度假別墅了解
捷克不同的住宅風貌晚上參加晚宴與各國學者交流討論當前金融風暴過後各國的
房地產市場概況
與大會看版合影
6 月 2930 日參加研討會聆聽各國學者的論文本次研討會規模盛大參與人數
超過 500 人共 20 場次發表論文超過 400 篇議題涵括住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與
政策住宅與種族議題住宅市場動態私有出租住宅市場社會住宅住宅與都市永
續發展遷移與住宅政策住宅更新與維護住宅和家都會區住宅政策住宅福利
貧民窟住宅和社會學理論居住環境的健康東歐住宅市場和住宅政策住宅法律和
土地使用管制都市成長和轉變性別與住宅社會可負擔住宅的土地開發等非常豐
富本人覺得激盪出很多未來研究的方向7月 1 日本人發表論文「On the extent of
importance and demand of the smart kitchen」與會學者給予本文寶貴建議並於
會場與各國學者專家的互動討論國際學者對於節能與高齡化議題十分重視並且提出
智慧化廚房會使人快樂嗎植德研究者深思本人覺得收穫豐碩
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
3
二與會心得
歐洲住宅聯盟安排的研討會議程十分嚴謹組織完善透過網路註冊與上傳與分享
論文整體議程進行十分順暢會議地點在布拉格經濟大學舉行無太大的排場但是
參與會議的學者均能專心研討且在同一場次參與議程進行十分順暢
本人參加的場次為「住宅和家」本人發表的論文為智慧化廚房的重要性與需求之
研究許多學者對於何謂智慧化廚房相當感興趣本人採用量化研究會議中有許多學
者甚至提出採用質化研究的方法建議本人認為可以在明年度的使用體驗當中安排質化
的焦點群體訪談可以擷取使用者的經驗最為回饋設計的參考
三建 議
台灣住宅領域的研究已發展多年但是大多集中在住宅金融與估價住宅經濟與政
策和住宅選擇等議題豐富性遠不如歐洲此研討會台灣學者只有本人 1人參加亞洲
各國參與者以香港澳洲較多建議國內住宅領域宜加強研究的廣度與深度並與國際
多交流
四攜回資料名稱及內容
(一) 研討會摘要集一本
(二) 研討會節目行程表一本
(三) 大會並未發給論文全文光碟所有論文皆採網路下載方式
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
4
On the extent of importance and demand of the Smart Kitchen
Shu-Mei Chen Shwuhuey Wang Tzai-Zang Lee Peng-Hui Lee
Department of Real Estate ManagementKun Shan University710Taiwan
E-mail down562000hotmailcom
Abstract Faced with the challenges of globalization
enhancing the quality of life with high-tech has
become an important issue in the policy of
technologically advanced countries Therefore the
Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2008 initiated the
Smart Taiwan and Quality Life focus issues to
promote the use of new technologies including the
broadband infrastructure remote health care smart
living spaces smart living technology and
applications in response to the challenges of the
future needs and to improve peoples satisfaction in
their lives
This study aims to analyze what the users want in a
smart kitchen so that a design centered on the Smart
Kitchen can be realized in a quality smart living
space This enables designers to address the
characteristics and requirements of clients and design
adequate user interface and functionality and let the
users get closer to have better and more convenient
products Therefore this study employed purposive
sampling method to conduct the survey We sampled
primary users of home kitchens in homes equipped
with internet in five metropolitan regions and two
sub-metropolitan regions and send out 1445 paper
questionnaires and 213 online questionnaires
The results indicated that the importance and
extent of demand on functions and equipments of the
Smart Kitchen is positively pair wised correlated
The main user stated the prior functions could be
reference for the designerrsquos when designing the
system The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos
attitude toward the function and demand of the Smart
Kitchen is as the following safety energy-saving
health convenience and comfort kitchenrsquos functions
need to get advanced from basic needs to enjoyed
needs
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment
Key words living space smart kitchen importance
demand
I Introduction 11 Preface In view of global climate change and rising
international energy prices energy-saving and carbon
reduction has become a universal value According to
the Bureau of Energy a division of Ministry of
Economic Monthly Energy indicators showed that
from 1990 to 2008 residential and commercial
electricity consumption increased from 2085 to
2326 in Taiwans total consumption In particular
1154 of electricity consumption was used in
residential section (Bureau of Energy 2009)
Therefore in order to achieve the target set for 2025
in residential and commercial building energy
conservation at least 7000000 more homes with
renewable energy are required In addition
consumers have been expecting high-tech
development to bring more user-friendly and
convenient applications and services and this has not
been met This led to the issues of Smart Living
Spaces including the emerging applications and
services of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS)
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
5
Through UNS the user can acquire personal
services easily from various environments such as
office home public space or transport facilities by
using computers mobile phones home servers and
other electronic equipments At present countries all
over the world are developing application services in
numerous directions Taiwan can take a page out of
the two neighboring countries of Japan and South
Korea The Japanese government in 2004 proposed
the U-Japan concept in order to achieve UNS It
further launched the xICT policy in 2008 featuring
industry and region as two new ingredients in
response to the global trend while keeping the
framework of U-Japan The South Korean
government also launched in 2004 the U-Korea
strategy and its precursor IT839 to use UNS
technology as the core to form 8 Digital Services 3
Infrastructures and 9 growth power industries It is
clear that UNS application services have become a
key developing strategy in Japan and South Korea
12 Research background and Motivation
The main subject of this study is the Smart Kitchen
we would like to stress that besides the basis
function of a kitchen high-tech hardware and
software should be applied to the Smart Kitchen to
meet the usersrsquo demands convenience and comfort
The basic functions of the kitchen include cooking
drinking water cleaning storage and so on and a
space for family members to chat and communicate
Therefore the kitchen space in a family home plays a
rather important role and all family members are
users for this space The kitchendining room is a
space that the whole family must use every day
Past research indicated that the kitchen is a relatively
hazardous place in home for the senior juvenile or
handicapped members of the family This has an
impact on the frequency and duration for these
members to use the kitchen Therefore an energy
saving safe comfortable convenient and healthy
kitchen environment is a top priority in home design
In addition the gender of family members is also a
factor in the frequency and duration of using the
kitchen According to the DGBAS survey in 2004
313 of men in Taiwan participated in domestic
chores This rate is much lower than that of France
and the United States and higher than that of Japan
On the other hand 75 of Taiwanese females
participated in household chores Again this rate is
lower than that of France or the United States and is
slightly higher than that of Japan This shows that
in Europe and the United States both genders
participate in household chores more than in Asia
In all countries the females do more domestic chores
than the males The gap between the two genders is
most pronounced in Taiwan and Japan amounts to
437 and 578 percentage points respectively
(DGBAS 2005) Since using the kitchen is a
significant part of domestic chores one can deduce
that the women are the principal users of the kitchen
equipments and spaces Past studies have shown
that the traditional ideal of men fight out women
stay in in Asia is still influential in Asia and even
professional women use the kitchen longer and more
frequently than men and they discipline their
children with this idea Consequently young girls
in the home are often instructed to learn the ways in
the kitchen In view of this a kitchen designer must
consider the need of female users in a functional
design
As the Smart Kitchen differs from a traditional one
in its uses of high-tech hardwaresoftware in the
equipments in additional to basic functions it is
necessary to consider the female acceptance to such
technology as they are the principal users In the past
women have been regarded ill-fitted to science and
technology and some even consider their slowness in
adapting information technology as an inborn or
social trait Many scholars pointed to the difference
in male and female physiology for their difference in
expertise For example men are better in
mathematics and logic and women are more talented
in languages and social skills Therefore the
computer and information industry was a
male-dominated one From design to career
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
6
promotions everything is completely centered on
males
According to a survey by the US cable television
company Oxygen Media the trend has changed
there was a huge increase in female uses of
technology products and the gap is closing
significantly Most American women can quickly
adopt a new technology and use it skillfully An
average American woman owned 66 electronic
gadgets while the American man owned 69 Also
80 of women feel no obstacles in using
technological products and 46 of them can deal
with computer problems Therefore the women are
essentially as good as the men in using technology
now
Taipei Computer Association also found that IT
consumer market has changed accordingly The
women have become such important consumers of
3C digital products that the manufacturers have to
target the female buyers and to design products to
meet the females liking If we look at the sales
figure the worldwide sales of consumer electronic
products to female customers amounted to 55 billion
US dollars in 2003 exceeding the figure of male
customers for the first time in history Therefore
the women who were often neglected in the past has
officially become the most important consumers
This shows that women and technology go well
together and more and more women enjoy using
technology to make their lives more interesting and
convenient This is an enormous business
opportunity and it pushes manufacturers and
designers to focus on female user centered designs
This is a trend that we emphasize in this study
13 The Purpose of This Study
In accordance with the background and motivation
discussed above this study polled on homes within
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions We targeted homes with IT equipments
(computers and internet) and their principal users of
the kitchen and conducted a questionnaire survey to
explore consumerrsquos cognition of Kitchen functions
to analyze their unmet needs in the kitchen to
pinpoint elements for better designs Secondly we
differentiate the expectations of the Smart Kitchen
from different family members and divide the
consumers into different consumer groups based on
the types of families to serve as a reference for
market segmentation of the Smart Kitchen Finally
we studied the extent of userrsquos needs of the Smart
Kitchen and we hope that our quantified
questionnaires and analysis will be useful for
designers for their subsequent designs More
specifically the purposes of this study are as the
following
1 Analysis of the kitchen users expectation and
knowledge regarding the Smart Kitchen
its functions and equipments Find out the
unsatisfied demands and the conditions for a
kitchen-centered quality home environment
2 Analysis of the differences in perceptions of
importance and necessity of the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions among family members in
particular the safety requirements for handicapped
seniors and children and the demand of female users
who will use the kitchen most frequently The cross
analysis will be a useful reference for future designs
3 Dividing the consumers into groups according to
family types and analyzing the differences in their
priorities regarding kitchen equipments and functions
for applications to meet the essence of market
segmentation
4 Analysis of the kitchen users acceptance of
technology products for the Smart Kitchen
equipments and functions and its relevance to their
demands
14 Research questions
As mentioned above this study intended to
integrate the literature on consumers demands on the
Smart Kitchen equipments and functions and made
further empirical research We hope to gain more
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
7
insight into the dependency on family types and
family members
In marketing theory the decision-makers usually
make different marketing strategies based on
different groups of consumers target customerrsquos
characteristics and demands The designers
however often consider from the viewpoints of users
and design to meet the needs Therefore in this
study to realize a Smart-Kitchen centered design in a
quality living environment we first analyze the need
of the users Therefore we propose to explore the
following questions
1 What is the impact of family types and family
members on the perception of significance
and necessity of the Smart Kitchen features
2 Is the principal kitchen users acceptance of
technology a factor in their perception of
importance and necessity of the Smart
Kitchen features
II Literature Review
21 Userrsquos demand and acceptance
The word demand contains three different
meanings (Husen amp Postlethwaife 1985) First a
demand is a gap which recognizes the inconsistency
of the target and the reality that is the difference
between target status and actual status Second a
demand is a want or a preference the state of
wanting or preferring and in determining the demand
we do not need to determine the target status and the
actual status or their difference just the subjective
perception of wants or preference Third a demand
is a deficit (Scriven amp Roth 1978) ie the entity
does not meet the demand or to maintain a minimum
standard of satisfaction Applying these three
interpretations of demand to the Kitchen the object
of this study we see that there are three related
issues
1 At present the kitchen equipment does not
meet the users actual needs and there is a gap For
example in an apartment with limited living space
the need to make the best use of the kitchen space to
cope with varying size of a dining party is not met
2 Understanding the kitchen users subjective
wants and preferences of the space environment
For example automatically control the air
conditioning during cooking and dining in
accordance with indoor temperature change to
maximize the users subjective perception of comfort
3 The kitchens deficit in facilitiessoftware
makes it unable to meet the minimum level of
satisfaction For example the kitchen is isolated from
the living space improperly and hence the kitchen
users cannot monitor the young children in the
bedroom Therefore this study first explored the
users demands of the Smart Kitchen for the future
integration and reference for designers
Maslows theory of needs hierarchy (Abraham H
Maslow 1954) can be utilized to explain the various
needs of users of products The theory classifies
human needs into many different levels including
physiological needs security needs affiliation needs
esteem needs and self-actualization needs As there
are many categories of needs there are corresponding
attributes of products to meet the psychological needs
of users Therefore the technology of producing
products must always be innovated and changed to
meet all the needs not just the physiological and
security ones That is the users desire for a product
comes from the needs in multiple categories and we
must consider the more intrinsic psychological needs
in additional to the obvious physiological needs
In addition Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1993) proposed
more specifically that the three basic needs to satisfy
a user are usefulness usability and desirability In
particular a user interface which can be used and
easily understood by users of all ages and genders is
most helpful in making a product be popular Yu (Yu
1998) pointed out that the development of electronic
product is subject to the rapid development of the
technology and becomes diversified Whether the
usability and product information can be correctly
and completely conveyed to the users is absolutely
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
8
related to the products acceptance Operational
problems encountered by users are also influential in
the acceptance of a product on the market and is an
important factor in its success or failure on the
market
22 Assessing the needs of users
To know and analyze of the needs of the users is
not easy for a designer This is because of that it is
not always easy to detect the needs of the users
When a users need is not obvious it doesnt mean
that the need is not there it is just that the need is
obscure or not strongly perceived This can only be
resolved by diverse assessment model for users
needs Only by using a complete analysis of users
need in the design we can give the users the better
product interfaces and operation methods and
improve the usefulness of the product From the
viewpoint of consumer behaviors the adopting
situation of a product affects the consumer behavior
and is subject to what the consumers perception of
the product characteristic and image The
characteristic and image varies with the environment
As the consumption happens in the adopting situation
the marketers must understand which situation their
products belong to Such information will enable
the marketers to successfully sell their products to
consumers in various situations
Similarly from the viewpoint of userrsquos behaviors
the adopting situation of a product also affects the
user behavior and the designer must understand the
situation of his design This information can bring his
design closer to the users life and even make the
users prefer his design In other words the key to
satisfy a user is to provide the designer with the
users desired function in the relevant situation so
that the need can be met
It is worth mentioning the concept of
User-Centered Design (UCD) in which the product
design is centered on users and this helps the
designer to perceive and analyze the users need
By analyzing the users objectives and activities
mode and environment of operation the designer can
repeatedly redesign and test the products Simply
put UCD emphasizes meeting the users expectation
and produce product of their hearts desire
23 Users demand and interactive design
The object of this study the Smart Kitchen also
stress an interactive system design The ISO 9241-10
gave the principles of interaction design and pointed
out that the interaction between a user and an
interactive device should be in accordance with
software ergonomics and meet the seven principles
for evaluations and applications task adequacy
operability consistency fault tolerance
self-describability personalization easy to learn
Moreover Oviatt (Oviatt 1997) also mentioned in his
study of multi-modal interaction that the four
principles of interactive designs are transparent
flexible efficient and expressive powerfully A
designer can use these principles to make UCD
In this study we used questionnaire to survey the
userrsquos cognition needs and expectations For
example we designed a questionnaire to understand
the users demand and acceptance of the Smart
Refrigerator its storage health message purchasing
guides recipes and videoaudio functions We
analyze the users expectation and knowledge of the
Smart Refrigerator We also study whether the users
understand that a Smart dining chair can adjust its
functions according to the human body the functions
of a desktop living assistant whether interactive
games are interesting whether the Smart Kitchen
improve the family life In addition we also try to
understand whether the users know about the
interactive view windows in a kitchen the security
alerts the energy-efficient lighting designs and
whether they meet users need in security
environment protection and comfort in a Smart
Kitchen By constructing and better quality Kitchen
we can improve the living quality
24 Gender family type and family members and
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
9
the demand in the kitchen use
According to past research the family type in a
home has an impact on the gender division of labor
For example women in a nuclear family are usually
career women and the main person doing household
chores But in an extended family these tasks may be
divided between a mother-in-law and a
daughter-in-law She also noticed that eating-out is a
common practice now A young couple in 1999 was
more likely to eat out than one in 1970 even after
marriage In 1999 a young husband is less likely to
subject to the traditional view of genders and less
likely to regard cooking as the task of a wife He
may participate in cooking himself Thus we see that
different family types lead to different patterns in
family members usage of the kitchen Therefore in
our study we used the relevant survey by the
Directorate General of Budget and divided family
types into the categories such as single-person
household single-parent family couple without
children family nuclear family grandparent-grand
child family and extended family We hope that this
survey and analysis on the usage demand among
family members of various types of family will be an
inspiration for designers The kitchen is a central
part of family life and must satisfy each individual
family member The difference in family types is
seen in the size of the family the gender ideology
the gender division of labor the use of kitchen
functions Therefore our study focused on how
family types impact the demands in a Smart Kitchen
instead of just the living style of users which is done
in most product designs
Standardized products are not enough for special
group of people They often want a more
individualized or custom-made design Therefore
there are personalized functions Currently there
are many different forms of personalized services
provided by Internet Service Providers Caglayan C
Harrison and CG Harrison (1997) grouped these
services into three types customized learning user
interests and learning community behavior
This study targeted career women (with better
financial ability greater requirement in efficiency
and better acceptance in technology) senior citizens
and children (who have higher demands in security)
and men (who may be less experienced in family
chores) and survey their demands in the Smart
Kitchen and analyze the difference We also study
the families consisting of such members and hope to
apply the survey result to customized kitchen
equipment design We combined ideas from other
sub-projects to understand the users demands and
acceptance by our empirical studies For example to
use IP camera to shorten the virtual distance so that
the image of young children in a bedroom can be
seen in the kitchen and they can be pacified by audio
and video to use RFID-equipped kitchen appliances
a interchangeable user interface a chair that adjust its
height automatically according to the user a software
that learns and manage itself a detector of what one
carries when going out All these functions rely on
smart services based on recognition of family
members
III Research Design
31 Subjects
We used Directorate General of Budgets 2007
overview of computer applications It showed the
popularity of family computers and home internet
We saw that currently internet is more popular in the
five metropolitan regions and two sub-metropolitan
regions Therefore we set the targets of this study
to be people meeting the following conditions (1) the
main users of the kitchen at home (2) hisher home
should have IT equipments (computers and network)
(3) heshe lives in the five metropolitan regions or the
two sub-metropolitan regions
32 Design of questionnaire
In our questionnaire each question is formed after
Likerts scale 5 point scale 1 for strongly
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
10
disagreeing 5 for strongly agreeing We now
describe the content design of the questionnaire
1 Importance we designed a total of 36
questions to measure the subjects view of the
importance of the Smart Kitchen 11
questions on safety features 7 on health
function 6 on energy-saving features 6 on
convenience and 6 on comfort features
2 Demand there are also a total of 36 questions
designed to measure the subjects demand on
the Smart Kitchen 11 questions on safety
features 7 on health function 6 on
energy-saving features 6 on convenience
and 6 on comfort features
3Technology acceptance we devoted 8
questions to test the subjects acceptance to
technology products
33 The sample survey and effective sample structure
Subject to the above conditions we chose people
living in the five metropolitan regions or the two
sub-metropolitan regions with IT equipment
(computers and Internet) at home and being the main
users of the kitchen for the questionnaire survey We
send out a total of 1445 paper copies of
questionnaires and 213 web questionnaire and 1185
were sent back to us This yields the response rate of
7279 After eliminating the invalid sample we
received 1001 copies of valid responses this makes
the valid returning ratio turns out to be 6085 The
sampling is under 95 of confidence level and 3 of
sampling error
34 Importance-Demand Analysis
The Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
framework was introduced by Martilla and
James(1977) in marketing research in order to assist
in understanding customer satisfaction as a function
of both expectations concerning the significant
attributes and judgments about their performance
Analyzed individually importance and performance
data may not be as meaningful as when both data sets
are studied simultaneously (Graf Hemmasi amp
Nielsen 1992) Hence importance and performance
data are plotted on a two dimensional grid with
importance on the y-axis and performance on the
x-axis The data are then mapped into four quadrants
(Bacon 2003 Martilla amp James 1977)
This study applies IPA approach and modifies it
into importance- demand analysis In quadrant 2
importance is high and demand is also high
indicating the existing systems require urgent
corrective action and thus should be given top
priority Items in quadrant 1 indicate low importance
and high demand This quadrant is labeled as
ldquoConcentrate Hererdquo which indicates that existing
systems have strengths and should being promote In
contrast the category of low importance and low
demand items makes the third quadrant labeled as
ldquoLow Priorityrdquo While the systems with such a rating
of the attributes do not pose a threat they may be
candidates for discontinuation Finally quadrant 4
represents high importance and low demand which
suggests insignificant strengths and a possibility that
the resources invested may better be diverted
elsewhere
IV Statistical analysis
41 Analysis of personal background information
We analyzed the 1001 valid samples according to
their personal background information One can see
that the female (810 persons 809) far
outnumbered the male (191 persons 191) 446
persons (446) have 2 children or less and 335
persons (335) are single 870 (869) of the
respondents have a high school diploma or higher
and 676 of them go online one hour or more
everyday 537 of them prepare a meal daily or less
frequently 506 (505) of them belong to a core
family 119 (119) to a 3-generation family (among
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
11
these 836 are second generation members in the
family) 200 respondents (200) have a child of
age 6 or less 358 (358) of them have a child of
age 6-18 and 350 (35) of them have a child older
than 18 Moreover 192 (35) of them have a family
member of age 65 or older and 48 (48) have a
family member with disability
Table 1 Background of the respondents
Demographics Number
(person) Ratio ()
Male 191 191 Gender
Female 810 809 Under 30 260 2597 31-40 344 3437 41-50 266 2657 51-60 117 1169
Age
61-70 14 140 Yes 740 739 Full-time
employed No 261 261 Elementary School
53 53
Junior middle school
78 78
Senior high school
345 345
University or college
423 423
Graduate school (or above)
102 102
Education
others 5 05 No children 395 395 Children
status One or more 606 605 3 times daily 154 154 2 times daily 310 310 Once a day 335 335
Times to cook daily
Less than one 202 202
daily Almost not 157 157 Within 1 hour 168 168 1 to 2 hours 152 152 2 to 3 hours 155 155 3 to 4 hours 122 122
Hours on internet daily
More than 4 hours
247 247
Agriculture and farming
45 45
Medical and social welfare
48 48
Culture and leisure
22 22
Public administration
53 53
Utilities 10 10 Transportation and communi-cation
22 22
Education 100 100 Mining 8 08 Manufacturing 158 158 Constructing 41 41
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family
Wholesale and retailing
61 61
Demographics Number(person) Ratio()
Lodging and food 69 69 Finance and insurance 164 164 Real estate and leasing 34 34
Occupation of the main economic resource of the family Technology
Others 71 95
71 95
Single income 467 467 Source of income
Double income 534 533 Under NT$ 26000 124 124 NT$26001~48000 288 288 NT$48001~67000 226 226 NT$67001~90000 158 158 NT$90001~150000 164 164
Average family monthly income
Above NT$150001 41 41 Single-person household 103 103 Couple without children 136 136 Single-parent 81 81 Nuclear 506 505
Family type
Grandparent-grandchild 55 55
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
12
Extended 119 119 Others 1 01 No 801 800 Have children aged
Under 6 years Yes 200 200 No 643 642 Have children aged
Between 6 to 18 years
Yes 358 358
No 651 650 Have children aged Above 18 years Yes 350 350
No 809 808 Have seniors aged above 65 years Yes 192 192
No 953 952 Have disabled members
Yes 48 48
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
13
42 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
Table2 Statistical analysis of the extent of importance and demand
The extent of Importance
The extent of demand RankFunctions
Mean SD Mean SD 1 Interacting with kids through the screen 366 101 347 111 2 Warning of overload in electricity 440 078 423 084 3 3 Warning of wet floor 404 088 387 097 4 Warning of gas leaking 456 074 436 084 1 5 Warning of kidrsquos approaching the hot soup 437 081 413 096 6 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in gas oven 445 075 414 096 7 Advanced design of childrenrsquos safety in cabinets 425 079 402 098 8 Gas oven-timer 441 076 422 085 4 9 Automatically switching off the gas stove when fire goes out 446 076 430 086 2
10 Switching on the range hood first then the gas oven can be turned on
407 091 394 097
S A F E T Y 11 Informing gas leaking through mobile phone message 418 091 401 096
12 Consulting food information through computer or mobile phone 337 094 332 101 13 Providing dietary suggestions based on different situations or
diseases through computer nutrition system 352 090 345 097 2
14 Calculating the calorie and nutritious facts of the take-out foods through computer
333 095 326 102
15 Informing the expiring food through phone call or mobile phone message
330 103 327 107
16 Informing abnormal temperature of the refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone message
334 103 342 105 3
17 The function of weighting and fat detecting of the dinning chair 324 102 329 104
H E A L T H
18 Usable memo system for the aged people in the home 389 094 368 100 1
19 Controlling the lights of other rooms or aisles in any room of the home
341 100 342 104 3
20 Controlling the lighting system through internet when out of the home
337 105 335 108
21 Monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through computer or mobile phone
346 102 341 104
22 Controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting through computer or mobile phone
325 105 325 109
23 Informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through computer or mobile phone
350 102 345 104 1
E N E R G Y
S A V I N G
24 Indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen through computer
351 106 343 108 2
25 Checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone
327 100 322 105
26 Showing food menu selecting and purchasing list through the refrigeratorrsquos screen
324 097 323 103
27 Speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen
341 102 336 105 2
28 Communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen
347 103 333 103 3
29 Dialing out and answering the phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen
349 102 343 102 1
C O N V E N I E N C E
30 Dining and chatting with the remote family members through the interacting screen of the kitchen
331 105 322 109
31 Dinning chairrsquos automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
321 113 314 115 2
32 Detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair
329 107 322 112 1
33 Automatically indicating the userrsquos e-mail through the wisdom dinning table
295 105 294 109
34 The entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table 303 103 301 109 3
C O M F O R T 35 The typesetting function of the wisdom dinning table 297 105 294 110
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
14
36 The interacting remote information exchanging and game playing function of the wisdom dinning table
290 110 287 113
Figure 1 Safety function
Based on figure 1
1 Functions like Warning of overload in electricity
warning of the gas leaking warning of childrenrsquos
approaching the hot soup advanced design of
childrenrsquos safety in gas oven gas oven-timer and
automatically switching off the gas stove when fire
goes out are located in the 2nd quadrant it indicates
that the respondents think the factors are both
important and necessary the results may be an
important reference for designers
2 Interacting with children through the screen
warning of wet floor advanced design of childrenrsquos
safety in cabinets switching on the range hood first
then the gas oven can be turned on Informing gas
leaking through mobile phone message The above
functions are located in the third quadrant it shows
that the respondents think the factors are not
important and less necessary they are also the
indicators that designers may utilize to improve the
function or enhance the product to attract customers
Figure 2 Health function
Results of figure 2 indicates
1 Functions of providing dietary suggestions based
on different situations or diseases through computer
nutrition system and usable memo system for the
aged people in the home are located in the 2nd
quadrant it implies that the respondents think the
functions are both important and necessary
Designers need to regard them as important
referential factors
2 Function of informing abnormal temperature of the
refrigerator through phone call or mobile phone
message is located in the 1st quadrant it represents
that the function is necessary but not so important
Accordingly the function is the critical factor for the
Smart Kitchenrsquos future development designers
should improve the shortcomings of the function to
increase the productrsquos importance
Figure3 Energy-saving function
Findings of figure 3 are
1 Functions of monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo
situation through computer or mobile phone
informing that the refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly
closed through computer or mobile phone and
indicating the consumed electricity of the kitchen
through computer are located in the 2nd quadrant it
indicates that the respondents think the factors are
both important and necessary so they can be the
designers important referential indicators
2 Function of controlling the lights of other rooms or
aisles in any room of the home is located in the first
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
15
quadrant it shows that the function is not important
but necessary so the function plays a critical role in
the productrsquos future development The designers
should notice that maybe itrsquos necessary nowadays
but not to enhance the productrsquos importance in the
future
3 Functions of controlling the lighting system
through internet when out of the home and
controlling different roomrsquos temperature and lighting
through computer or mobile phone are located in the
third quadrant it represents that the respondents think
that the factors are less important and not so
necessary The designers should regard the factors as
important indicators to increase the productrsquos value to
attract customers in the future
Figure 4 Convenience function
The result of figure 4 indicates 1 Functions of dialing out and answering the
phone through the interacting screen of the kitchen and communicating with the visitors and opening the door through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the 2nd quadrant it means that the respondents think that the factors are both important and necessary they can be the designers important referential factors when designing
2 Function of speed message by hand writing through the interacting screen of the kitchen is located in the first quadrant it indicates that the respondents think that the factor is necessary but less important So the designers should improve the shortcomings of the factors to increase the degree of importance
3 Functions of checking the amount and expiration date of the food in the refrigerator and cabinets through computer or mobile phone and dining and chatting with the remote family
members through the interacting screen of the kitchen are located in the third quadrant this indicates that the respondents think the factors are less important and not so necessary so the designers should regard them as important indicators to improve the quality and increase the productrsquos value in the future
Figure 5 Comfort function
From figure 5 we can find
1 Functions of dinning chairrsquos automatic homing
function for userrsquos convenience and detecting the
userrsquos figure and adjust to the most comfortable
position of the wisdom dinning chair are located in
the 2nd quadrant it indicates that the respondents
think the factors are both important and necessary so
the designers can regard them as important indicators
when designing
2 Functions of automatically indicating the userrsquos
e-mail through the wisdom dinning table the
entertaining function of the wisdom dinning table
the typesetting function of the wisdom dinning
table and the interacting remote information
exchanging and game playing function of the
wisdom dinning table are located in the third
quadrant it reports that the respondents think the
factors are less important and not so necessary so
the designers may improve them to increase the
productrsquos function and value in the future
43 Discussion
The study employed independent sample T
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
16
statistical test to examine if there exists significant
difference of the average scores between the
samplesrsquo demographics (include gender occupation
hours of internet family type number of children
aged under 6 and number of adults aged above 65)
and technology acceptance The results of table 3
showed some interesting issues listed as the
following
1 The users of ldquohigh technology acceptancerdquo tend to have higher demand toward the five dimensions of kitchen safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For those who have higher acceptance toward technological products the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen would be utilized more
2 Those users who use Internet more than 4 hours a day tend to have higher demand on dimensions such as safety health energy-saving convenience and comfort For they have used to utilize the equipments of computer and Internet meanwhile they also have higher
demand on ubiquitous service provided by the Smart Kitchen
3 Gender It was supposed that gender would make significant difference on demand of the Smart Kitchen however the results of T test indicated that the difference is not significant
4 Users have family members aged above 65 tend to have higher demand on dimension of health it is estimated that in the aging society users need to take care of the health of aged people and overcome the inconvenience of daily lives caused by aging
5 Core family is the mainstream type of the society yet the other types (such as single family or extended family) do not make significant difference on the demand of functional dimensions of the Smart Kitchen Probably it is because the number of the family type is few their demand does not make any significant difference when compared with that of core family
Table 3 Independent sample T test(n=1001)
Safety Health Energy-saving Convenience Comfort Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Average Score
T test Average
ScoreT test
AverageScore
T test Average
Score T test
AverageScore
T test
High 420 354 361 358 332 Technological acceptance Low 402
405 306
905309
964297
1159 263
1205
Single income
420 344 349 342 311 Resource Of
Income Double income
410 164
331 189
336 192
329 201
300 143
Male 407 331 338 333 306 Gender Female 413
117 334
054 338
002 331
-019 301
-062
Less than 4 hours
407 327 331 323 295 Internet hours More than
4 hours 429
-439 354
-448361
-512358
-568 324
-413
No 411 336 339 332 305 Child aged under 6 Yes 418
-116 324
169 334
071 330
018 292
166
No 410 331 336 329 300 Adult aged above 65 Yes 420
-176 344
-203349
-193 342
-201 311
-142
Core family
413 333 336 332 301 Family type
Extended family
420 -100
338 -062
349 -151
334 -024
303 -020
Core family
410 327 342 327 309 Family type
Single family
413 -030
333 152
336 055
332 -060
301 076
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
17
V Conclusion
This chapter is going to make a conclusion based
on the results of chapter 4 with the attempt to help
the designer to understand the main userrsquos demand of
the Smart Kitchen as well as remind the future
designer to realize that both the opinion of the main
user and other members of the family should be
considered as an important factor when designing the
system Further research directions and suggestions
are provided for future researchers finally
51 Research limitation
The respondents of the research are the residents
of five metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas
that equipped with computer and internet facilitation
however some of the respondents indirectly rejected
to fill out the questionnaire for the items are too
many this might cause the bias of some of the
respondents when filling out the questionnaire
52 Conclusion
The objective of the research is to explore the
main userrsquos extent on the Smart Kitchenrsquos
importance and demand The respondents of the
questionnaire mainly come from the five
metropolitan and two sub-metropolitan areas that
equipped with computer and internet facilitation in
Taiwan The results are analyzed by independent
sample t-test and are explained as the following
The extent of importance and demand of the
Smart Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
indicated that the importance and extent of demand
on functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen is
positively pair wised correlated Those who regard
the functions and equipments of the Smart Kitchen as
important factors have higher demands
The extent of importance and demand of the Smart
Kitchen in terms of the main user The results
showed that in safety dimension the respondents
think the factors (such as gas and electricity) are both
important and necessary in health dimension the
respondents think the functions (for example
computer nutrition system and usable memo system)
are both important and necessary in energy-saving
dimension the respondents think the factors (like
monitoring the electric appliancesrsquo situation through
computer or mobile phone informing that the
refrigeratorrsquos door is not tightly closed through
computer or mobile phone) are both important and
necessary in convenience dimension the
respondents think that the factors (such as dialing
out and answering the phone through the interacting
screen of the kitchen and communicating with the
visitors and opening the door through the interacting
screen of the kitchen) are both important and
necessary in comfort dimension the respondents
think the factors (for example dinning chairrsquos
automatic homing function for userrsquos convenience
and detecting the userrsquos figure and adjust to the most
comfortable position of the wisdom dinning chair)
are both important and necessary The above stated
functions could be designerrsquos important factors when
designing the system
The factorrsquos ranking of the main userrsquos attitude
toward the function and demand of the Smart Kitchen
is as the following safety (average score 412)
energy-saving (average score 338) health (average
score334) convenience (average score 331)
comfort (average score 302) The cooking activities
need to utilize electricity and gas so the users regard
safety as the first important factor on evaluating the
Smart Kitchen system secondly as the price of
energy is keeping going up energy-saving is the
prevalent thinking in the era of green consuming
thirdly the full-employed respondents accounts for
more than seventy percent of the whole respondents
they do hope the Smart Kitchen can have the
health-oriented function and be able to maintain
family memberrsquos health in modern business society
finally the degree of convenience is slightly higher
than that of comfort it is because that modern
women play the roles of occupational women and
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
18
house mothers they are the primary manpower of the
family the cleaning and fixing of the kitchen takes a
lot of efforts so if the Smart Kitchen possesses the
function of convenience it will surely be popular
Meanwhile the function of comfort is ranked the last
in terms of necessity the situation right matches
Maslowrsquos Theory of needs hierarchy which states
that when humanrsquos basic needs are satisfied theyrsquoll
seek for higher level needs Similarly kitchenrsquos
functions need to get advanced from basic needs to
enjoyed needs
Family members on the importance and demand of
the facilitation of the Smart Kitchen the results
indicated that there exists significant difference on
each functional dimension in technological
acceptance and Internet hours When the participants
have higher demand in technological acceptance
they tend to have higher demand on each functional
dimension the participants who use Internet more
than 4 hours tend to have higher demand toward each
functional dimension of the Smart Kitchen than those
who use Internet less than 4 hours Besides the
participants who have family members aged above
65 tend to have higher demand towards the
dimensions of health and convenience it is estimated
that it is because that in the aging society the aged
people need to be specially taken care of and some of
the inconvenience in their daily lives need to be
overcome However the participants who have
family members aged under 6 did not bring any
significant difference for the result Therefore the
above stated difference may be a critical reference for
marketers when making segmentation strategies for
special market
The daily activities generate vitality because of
human the so-called dwelling is transformed to be
ldquohomerdquo for the sake of people Therefore the
function of kitchen should not be limited in the scope
of cooking only it should be empowered to have the
functions of daily dinning family memberrsquos affection
connection health concerning as well as the place of
life enjoyment The study suggests that future
research should combine the related issues such as
gender family life cycle family memberrsquos job to
explore the difference on the function of kitchenrsquos
demand and expectation
References [1]Bacon D R (2003) ldquoA comparison of
approaches to importance-performance analysisrdquo
International Journal of Market Research
45(1)55-71
[2]Caglayan A Harrison C amp Harrison CG
(1997)ldquoAgent sourcebook A complete guide to
desktop internet and intranet agentsrdquo New York
JohnWiley amp Sons
[3]Elizabeth B N S(1993)ldquoProduct Development
Research for the 1990rsquosrdquoProceeding of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual
Meeting
[4]Eurostat(2006)rdquoStatistics in focusmdashHow is the
time of women and men distributed in Europerdquo
[5]Graf L A Hermmasi Mamp Nielsen W (1992)
ldquoImportance satisfaction analysis A diagnostic
tool for organizational changerdquo Leadership and
Organization Development Journal 13(6) 8-12
[6]Husen T amp Postlethwaife T N(1985) ldquoThe
International encyclopedia of educationrdquo
Pergamon Press LtdVol6pp3497
[7]Martila J A amp James JC(1977)
ldquoImportance-performance analysisrdquo Journal of
Marketing 2(1)77-79
[8]National Income Statistics Yearbook (2005)
DGBAS Republic of China (Taiwan)
[9]Oviatt SL(1997)ldquoMultimodal interactive maps
designing for human performancerdquoHuman
Computer Interactionvol12pp93-129
[10]Scriven M Roth R A(1978) The program
evaluation instruction seriesmdashBooks III III
University Press of America
[11]Sulaiman Ainin amp Nur Haryati Hisham (2008)
ldquoApplying Importance-Performance Analysis to
Information Systems An Exploratory Case Studyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo
19
Journal of Information Information Technology
and Organization Volume 3 95-103
[12]USBureau of Labor Statistics(2006)rdquoAmerican
Time Use Surveyrdquo