How to Prepare Your Family Member for a Smart Home

Smart homes are fast becoming a must-have for many households because of the real benefits they bring. If you’re a tech enthusiast and feel your family could use its convenience and efficiency, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ready for it too.

Besides making life easier, home automation features do save households a lot of money and time they’d otherwise spend on certain tasks.

The challenge is in getting your family members’ buy-in before making the change. Below we share a few practical tips for preparing your family member for a smart home.

Fact finding

The first step is always checking with your family members and finding out what they feel about smart homes, including their fears. Do they know the benefits and implications of smart homes or the gadgets and appliances involved and how they work?

Addressing their concerns also helps you know what you need to figure out that you may not have considered before and incorporate the ideas into your overall plan.

This would be a good starting point also for you to share why you feel making such an improvement would benefit everybody.

Show the added value

After explaining why you feel a smart home would be ideal, what with the convenience, affordability, efficiency and other benefits, the next step is to walk through the added value of the smart home. This is any other benefit of the device or smart tech you want to introduce other than the most obvious benefits.

You could talk about the kind of devices you’d like to add to the home and gauge what excites each member to help you know which gadget to implement first.

For example, a smart plug comes in handy when had to quickly leave the house and aren’t sure whether you unplugged the iron or other electrical items. You can convince your family member to get one by showing them that it not only brings peace of mind but also helps reduce the power bill and can be controlled from any device anywhere.

Start with devices they can use and control

You finally have your family member on your side, but that doesn’t mean you can now bring in all the smart gadgets you’ve always wanted to install right away. Think about the unobtrusive devices that they too can use and control like the smart plug, locks or lights, a voice assistant like Google Home or a thermostat.

Such devices won’t put them off as would things like video doorbells, Wi-Fi cameras or presence sensors and other automation tools.

Teach them how to use the smart gadgets

By now you have the full cooperation of your family members. Your main goal going forward is to help ease them into the idea of a smart home and make sure the gadgets are easy to use and accessible to everyone, otherwise they’ll get frustrated.

Teach them how to use the smarthome. You can start by letting every family member, especially the younger ones, know what app to use or voice command to say in a particular room.

Cutting down on what they have to remember makes it easier and more likely for them to use the devices, and you could do this by naming and grouping devices for easier control.

As they progress, introduce new concepts slowly so that they don’t feel overwhelmed. You can even have a list of easy commands and steps to follow in each room that has smart gadgets. Ideally, everything should seem normal around the smart home, and you can achieve this by constantly reminding them how they’re used.

Monitoring and maintenance

Your smart home dream is now a reality in your own family. Keep it going by monitoring what works and what doesn’t. If a particular gadget isn’t being used, find out why – maybe they forgot how it works or they just don’t like it.

Continue educating them on the features and make adjustments where necessary so that it’s more useful to them.

Wrap-Up

At the end of the day your family members’ acceptance of the smart home concept determines whether it’s a go or a no. Smart devices should make life easier and more convenient, not harder. If they’re not too happy with the idea, don’t get too obsessed about it or you’ll be disappointed. You can always start with one gadget, see how it’s accepted, and slowly work to win their acceptance. You don’t have to wait for a single moment to start improving your home.