WAF is a good thing

[jhearty]

We all know all too well what it stands for and what it means. I've seen the term used pretty much since I started home automation about 19 years ago. There are lots of crazy things we might come up with that we think are a good idea. When they have high WAF, chances are good they really are a good idea. When they have low WAF, chances are they really are a poor idea.

We should be grateful to our significant others for keeping us on the path of useful and intuitive home automation so our lives are made easier and we are not forced to train ourselves to do unnatural things. They often bring the same sense of practicality and expectations the average consumer does to other products. I for one always listen to their feedback and strive to improve things based on it. They know what they are talking about.

John

[langenet]

Interesting you bring this up... I had implemented a double tap on the 3-way light switch going upstairs. The intent was to double tap it when we went to bed to turn all the lights off (works great btw). Then 'she' after forgetting to double tap the lights off one night this earlier this week after I had already gone to bed mentioned that this was confusing and came back with "how are our guests going to know about this?" The lighting is getting complicated around here (also helped by her thinking to double tap it to dim the lights) and it should be more intuitive and that I should follow the "Apple" approach and make it simple. - I was stunned and speechless after hearing that.

Robert

[tenholde]

Highest WAF thing I did recently was installing Alexa and interfacing to HS.

"Alexa, trigger Kitchen Lights Dim"

And, right out of the box: "Alexa, add beer to the grocery list" (alright, that's really my favorite).

tenholde

[rmasonjr]

I cant overstate the Echo enough. My family uses "Alexa, turn the house off" before bedtime and it does everything - dims, turns off lights, arms alarm, etc. It's also useful when leaving the house during the day.

[jhearty]

Interesting you bring this up... I had implemented a double tap on the 3-way light switch going upstairs. The intent was to double tap it when we went to bed to turn all the lights off (works great btw). Then 'she' after forgetting to double tap the lights off one night this earlier this week after I had already gone to bed mentioned that this was confusing and came back with "how are our guests going to know about this?" The lighting is getting complicated around here (also helped by her thinking to double tap it to dim the lights) and it should be more intuitive and that I should follow the "Apple" approach and make it simple. - I was stunned and speechless after hearing that.

Robert

The new Homeseer switches present a usability issue. They can make things quite complex if we are not careful. A normal switch has no double tap and triple tap. The average person never heard of that. So they are extra tools for us to do something new, but we must be trained. For our house, I tried to keep it simple by having every lighting control do the same thing: a double tap On means leave that light on, a double tap Off means leave that light off (disable motion controlled lighting). Still requires training, but not too complicated and is uniform throughout the house. It is also something that is hopefully only rarely needed, so try to customize motion control to meet the needs 98% of the time without needing to press buttons.

I have started playing with triple tap here and there, but I can already see that is not easy for my spouse to remember and need to think more about how to KIS.

[waynehead99]

My wife keeps me in check all the time. She stated once that she doesn't want the house to control her, so motion triggered lights are minimal. What I have been doing with the new switches is mainly making a double tap off turns the whole room off like tv and music too. It's been accepted.

I had a few times where the lights turned off on her, ended up putting my delay threshold of no motion out to 15 minutes. Doesn't happen anymore.

But on the flip side, now she complains when something doesn't work, like if the light doesn't turn on when expected. So I guess she has kinda been trained to expect what she initially didn't want .

[langenet]

My wife keeps me in check all the time. She stated once that she doesn't want the house to control her, so motion triggered lights are minimal. What I have been doing with the new switches is mainly making a double tap off turns the whole room off like tv and music too. It's been accepted.

I had a few times where the lights turned off on her, ended up putting my delay threshold of no motion out to 15 minutes. Doesn't happen anymore.

But on the flip side, now she complains when something doesn't work, like if the light doesn't turn on when expected. So I guess she has kinda been trained to expect what she initially didn't want .

Yup... can relate to that. I think they came out of the same mold..