Inferior, yet Transformative: The User Experience with Robotic Vacuum Cleaners

Robotic vacuum cleaners are a prime example of home automation and a rich source of information about how people experience it. On the basis of a three-week diary study, this article compares householders’ user experience (UX) of robotic vacuum cleaners with their UX of three types of manual vacuum cleaner. The main finding is that robotic vacuum cleaners are inferior in use, yet transform vacuuming. While their inferiority is about their pragmatic qualities, their transformative power relates to their autonomy, agency, and hedonic qualities. This contradictory UX involves that robotic vacuum cleaners perform worse or not at all on seven out of nine surfaces and, at the same time, appear to escalate cleanliness standards. The transformation of household chores such as vacuuming is ongoing and calls for further research on engineering and merging the pragmatic and hedonic aspects of UX.