Beyond passive occupancy: expert perspectives on children as participants in smart home energy systems

Residential decarbonisation increasingly depends on smart technologies managing household energy generation, storage and consumption. Children are largely absent from this design discourse, positioned either as safety constraints or as occupants of systems configured by adults, a framing that overlooks the household as a site of energy learning. This paper reports a secondary analysis of interview data from a broader study of child-friendly smart home design.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 experts across five disciplines, purposively selected for expertise in domestic technology; two held direct expertise in energy management or building services. Interviews explored challenges and knowledge gaps concerning smart home technologies in households with children aged 0–12. Transcripts were analysed thematically within an abductive design, coded by the lead author with interpretation discussed in supervision. Energy was not the protocol's primary focus; themes were identified inductively. Ethics approval was obtained.

Participants described most domestic interfaces as assuming a single adult operator, rendering consumption controllable but not intelligible to other occupants. They identified a mismatch between the operational logic of smart systems, which optimises for measurable efficiency, and the household practices through which outcomes are realised. Several proposed that interfaces could instead serve an explanatory function, making consumption visible in forms children can interpret, with graduated access to settings as competence develops rather than by age. These were design propositions rather than tested interventions.

Reframing children as participants rather than occupants positions residential energy systems as potentially pedagogical as well as technical, with implications for retrofit and electrification in family households. Three limitations: the study elicited expert perspectives, not measurements; neither children nor families participated, so the account reflects professional rather than household reasoning; and energy was a secondary focus of data collection. Future work should pursue co-development with children and carers, and testing against metered consumption data.