Re: Master Thesis Topic

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@xxxxxxxxx>]

Christo Kleu wrote:
> On Apr 25, 12:14 am, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bru...@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>> RickH wrote:
>>> On Mar 30, 4:20 am, Christo Kleu <christok...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> Good day comp.home.automation
>>>> I am currently doing my Honors in Computer Engineering at University
>>>> of Pretoria (South Africa).
>>>> While studying, I am doing research regarding my fields of interest
>>>> (for my Masters).
>>>> I find the field of home/building automation very interesting - as it
>>>> covers embedded systems (programming) and aspects of networking
>>>> (routing/connectivity).
>>>> I was wondering if there is anyone in this group with academic
>>>> experience that can suggest some topics for a Master Thesis?
>>>> Any inputs would be appreciated.
>>>> Christo Kleu
>>> I would focus on user interfaces, UI simplicity, and research on how
>>> to get people to live "naturally" with HA.  The survival of HA depends
>>> mostly on this and not on what it can do.  If people have to explain
>>> how to turn on a light to the next buyer of their home, then there is
>>> a huge problem in the HA industry.  There are many areas where human
>>> interaction can be studied: voice, keypads, programming, ease of
>>> ownership, standardization, etc.
>> And installation.
>> Generally it takes a trained technician to set your up HA. Until the
>> average user can do it HA will be a niche market for retrofit.
>>
>> --
>> Dirk
>>
>> http://www.transcendence.me.uk/- Transcendence UKhttp://www.theconsensus.org/- A UK political partyhttp://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5- Our podcasts on weird stuff
>
> Thank you very much for the replies - these sounds like great and fun
> areas to research.
> Our second semester is from July to December, where we have an subject
> "Introduction to Research" - in this subject I can start doing some
> research regarding the areas you mentioned previously. Normally we
> formulate our Master Thesis proposal from the output of this subject.

On the user setup front, you should ask yourself why Microsoft appeared
to be looking at the HA market and then got cold feet. It strongly
suggests that they could not find a way of dumbing down the installation
to the point where they could sell millions.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff