Domestic Residency Protocol

The Domestic Residency Protocol is a proposed method for testing ambient systems in real homes. A lab has no tea going cold, no teenager, no argument at half ten at night. Ambient intelligence only makes sense where those things happen.

The idea is to place a speculative prototype in a household for months, not minutes, and to treat the household as a research partner and not a beta tester. The question is not whether people like it. It is where the thing stops being a tool and becomes a condition of the room.

Four phases

Baseline, two to three weeks. Nothing is installed except observation. We learn what normal looks like before anything changes it.

Staged deployment, six to eight weeks. The prototype arrives in steps: sensing only, then passive adaptation, then active intervention. This shows which behaviour tipped the system over the threshold.

Long-term integration, three to six months. The prototype becomes part of the house. The habits, workarounds and quiet adaptations only show up after the novelty has worn off.

Removal, two weeks. The prototype is taken out. This is the phase that matters most. What does the household miss, and what do they not notice is gone? The gap between those two answers is the finding.

Status

The Protocol is a design and a method. It is not yet a published dataset, and we make no claim that anyone else uses it. The aim is to make it open once it has been run properly.