Stephen Intille, technology director for the House_n consortium at MIT, says: “The PlaceLab is a residential home with hundreds of sensors integrated into its architecture that was built with the help of TIAX LLC, a collaborative R&D company. The purpose of the environment is to study how people use technology and how to design new technology that will integrate with everyday life.”

Based on the information from the sensors, Intille and his group have created applications that they hope people will find useful and want to buy.

“Our goal is to make applications that people won’t perceive as gadgets,” Intille says. “Instead, we are creating applications that will help people solve real problems, such as encouraging them to get more exercise and to manage their time better.”

One such application is the medication adherence system – a system for reminding people to take their medication. Intille says: “In the medication adherence system, there are hundreds of small sensors spread around the house and these sensors know when someone is interacting with certain objects, such as drawers and cabinets. Based on that, the system can determine the most convenient time to give someone a reminder about when to take their medication, using a mobile phone or personal digital assistant (PDA). So, rather than interrupting the person when they are watching TV, it waits until a convenient moment, such as when they are standing next to the medicine cabinet.”

Intille says the same kind of sensor-based technology can also help old people live more independently from their extended families by reminding them to do certain household chores, turn off appliances, and so on.

"We have also looked at a particular application for encouraging people to watch fewer hours of TV, and in a current study we are looking at how you can use a variety of sensors to create a new type of personal health record that is gradually acquired while you live in your home,” Intille says.

For the past two-and-a-half months, the MIT scientists have been monitoring a couple to find out how sensors can help them better manage their time. "Suppose the house knows how much time you’ve spent watching television, doing laundry, cleaning, reading, and socializing. This could then lead to new opportunities for creating applications that might help people manage their time better, which is a major concern for a lot of people.”

So far, no commercial products have been developed as a result of the MIT studies, but Intille believes it’s just a matter of time before they do. "I think the ideas we're generating in terms of how to create devices that would encourage changes in behavior are generally of interest to the industry. For example, the medication adherence system is interesting because medication adherence is a huge problem. Right now, a tremendous amount of money is wasted just because people don’t take their medication properly.”

Although the project is in its early days, Intille says they have learnt a thing or two about creating applications that may sound obvious but that many people do not take into consideration when developing new technology.

“Things need to be extremely easy to use; they need to solve a real problem,” he says. “They also should not annoy people when they are used over a longer period of time, and they need to be fun and engaging. Generally, I think the best applications are going to be fairly subtle and in the background, but still doing something useful for you.”

Torunn Hansen-Tangen