Abstract
Recently, newly built apartments in Korea are provided various home automation (HA) systems based on information technology(IT) for residents' safer, healthier and more convenient living. However, the residents in these digital apartments are often not able to use the home automation systems effectively because of lack of their IT knowledge, attitude, or education. However, there are few researches have been done to find out the HA systems' real problems with regard to residents' aspects who use those systems everyday. The purpose of this study was to find out residents' current uses, satisfaction level and existing problems of HA systems by residents' POE. The findings of this study will give useful information to digital home construction companies to provide user-friendly digital home services for increasing users' satisfaction. One distinctive apartment equipped with home automation systems located in Seoul was selected for in-depth personal interview. The researcher developed a survey instrument and collected the data from 58 residents in January, 2007 who had been living there for more than a year. The results of the study found that critical problems were existed in several systems and they caused a lot of dissatisfaction from the residents. Also, some residents do not use several systems although they need to use them due to the burden of maintenance fee. Further detail findings and suggestions of this study were discussed.
