4.3.1 Interview
Hill Care+ is managed by the caretakers, who are always available and assist the residents in the building. A non-profit organization owns and operates Hill Care+, but the building was built by a construction company engaged by the non-profit organization. Hill Care+ is constructed upon the Care+ concept, made by a Norwegian municipality. I will provide a more detailed description of the actors and stakeholders involved in the case of Hill Care+ in
12 “Husbanken” in Norwegian
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Chapter 5. The data was primarily collected from interviews with actors and stakeholders of Hill Care+ who are closely involved with the heating malfunction case, and with some experts on smart home technology. The interviewees were the director and a caretaker of Hill Care+, a technology manager and a technology consultant in the operations team of the non-profit organization which owns and rents out the building to the municipality, a manager in the service department and a technology integrator from the construction company which built Hill Care+, and an advisory consultant in the municipality who works with Care+
projects. In order to enhance my understanding of current smart home technology and its use in the market, I interviewed a designer in a company which specializes in smart home appliances and a building automation technology expert in a consulting company. Nine interviews were conducted in this study, and the interviews took place at the workplaces of the interviewees, or on Skype if they were working in a distant city. The interviews lasted for at least one hour or maximum one and a half hour.
Additional data was collected by email communication after the interviews. Before the interviews started, the interviewees were informed of the study and signed the consent form.
Some interviewees requested a list of questions in advance, but otherwise, the interviews were semi-constructed. All the interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. The analysis of the interviews was conducted mainly from transcripts of the interviews.
Even though the interviews were aimed at obtaining factual data on the error detection and troubleshooting process, the data from the interviews were combined with the interpretations of interviewees regarding the actions and events which took place and the views of
themselves and other stakeholders [43]. This sometimes resulted in different perspectives and interpretations on the same event. It was also challenging to reconstruct the event because of incomplete information arising from a lack of memory since not all the steps taken were documented and three years had already passed by the time the research was conducted.
In addition to the formal interviews, informal conversations were held with the residents of Hill Care+. The conversations have been organized in the lobby of Hill Care+ in a casual setting or under a social event. The issue of the conversations was the use of smart home technology in the apartment and the conversations were not audio-recorded but the keywords and the part of the conversation were noted afterward.
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4.3.2 Direct observation
After the interviews, subsequent observations were conducted and they were helpful to understand the work practices. The observation was usually combined with the interviews and not planned beforehand. The interviewees of the operation team demonstrated their work practice using the Building Automation System (BAS) after the interview. During the
demonstration they gave additional explanations of the systems and shared their experiences with using them. The observed systems confirmed what the interviewees described, for instance how dissimilar interfaces the underlying applications of the BAS had, which was one of the biggest challenges the interviewees mentioned. During the interview with the caretaker of Hill Care+ she received several alarm messages, so I could come up to the apartments where the alarm went off together with the caretaker and observed how she managed the situation and how the residents reacted to the alarm. After the interview she also demonstrated how the caretakers utilize the BAS, and she explained how they use it to
manage the alarms and to check the status of apartments. After a short and informal interview with one resident of Hill Care+, she showed me her apartment. I did not observe how she used the thermostat but she made some comments when I asked if she had used the
thermostat “It is not my thing, it is Christine’s (the name of one of the caretakers[my note])”
4.3.3 Documentation and archival records
Documentation and archival records are useful to understand past and current practices and use of existing software tools [25]. From the archival records of a software tool used for administration of maintenance tasks of Hill care+, I attempted to find any patterns among frequently requested maintenance tasks registered. The information book and the orientation checklist for new residents gave insight into the prioritized information to be provided to the new residents. The documentation that specified functional requirements that Hill Care+
should fulfill during construction were examined in order to understand what requirements were regarded as minimum and how detailed they were described. The user manual for the thermostat contributed to provide a more exact understanding of available functions that the implemented thermostat offers.
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4.3.4 Challenges
It was highly challenging to gather the data because the collected data should be complete and precise in order to reconstruct the story of the heating malfunction case in this study. As there were numerous actors and stakeholders involved and all of them had different
responsibilities regarding the detected malfunctions, an interview with one single actor could not provide a whole story of the heating case. When there were questions unanswered by the interviewee because they were not their domain or responsibility, I asked him or her to point to the relevant person. In this way the interviews were sequentially planned to collect all the pieces of information to reconstruct the entire troubleshooting process. However, not all the information was available. Since this was still an ongoing case at the time of my study, and a rather large repair was in the process of carried out, some actors were careful about sharing some sensitive information, for instance the scale of the malfunction which would be used in estimating the size of expenses to be paid. After seven interviews with the actors and the stakeholders I attempted to place the gathered information in chronological order to make a timeline with the dates of each significant event, and my timeline was confirmed in e-mail communication with the interviewees. The timeline will be presented in Chapter 6.