Research how users see the Home Assistant brand personality

Problem statement

There is no clear understanding of how people currently perceive Home Assistant. Decisions about brand and design direction are made without validating whether they address real perception gaps.

This creates a risk that efforts to improve approachability do not actually shift how users experience the product.

Community signals

• we know that Home Assistant is perceived as "too technical" or "complex"
• in shared households, we know that Home Assistant is typically used by one person only - the one who's administrating and maintaining the smart home system. For the other person in the home, Home Assistant is often intimidating and not approachable (they often do not use the app)
• the change from "durability" to "sustainability" - many people emphasize that they don't care about the sustainability aspect as a whole, but the durability part
• devices vs. entities - is often the first stumbling

Scope & Boundaries

In scope (tbd)

• people outside of the community
• people in the community
• prospective users

Not in scope

Foreseen solution

No response

Risks

• A potential deviation from what the community thinks of the Home Assistant identity
• Getting a biased response from one specific audience and considering this confidently as the truth
• involving participants not representative of the target group
• what people say and what people think and mean is not the same thing

Open questions

• What users? Core community? Active users? Prospective users? Specific demographics?
• How do they perceive us? What of that is positive / what's negative?
• What is important to them to stay? What can change?
• In "Make Home Assistant more approachable," who do we want to approach Home Assistant?
• Conclusion: do not mix the "approachable" goal here

Appetite

No response

Execution issues

• Who's owning / conducting this research?
• Underestimating effort: (study planning, recruiting participants, analysis, interpretation, alignment)
• unrealistic planning because of people on PTO

Decision log