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arXiv · 2605.23085

Remind Me To Check The Stove Before I Leave The House: Authoring Personalized Context-Aware Smart Home Reminders Using Everyday Language

Reina Szeyi Chan·Sujendra Jayant Gharat·Maya Lampi·Yueran Jia·Avi K Srinivasan·Xiang Zhi Tan
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Abstract

Reminder systems commonly rely on fixed schedules, location triggers, or simple rules, limiting their ability to leverage the rich sensing capabilities of modern smart homes. A key challenge lies in enabling users to specify context-aware reminders without requiring complex configurations. We present a system pipeline that supports reminder authoring through natural language and conversational interaction. The pipeline translates user requests into structured representations and executable logic, incorporating time-based, activity-based, sensor-based, and state-based conditions. We conducted two studies to examine how users express reminder intent and how conversational support influences the authoring process. In Study 1 (N=40), we analyzed 233 user-authored reminders and identified challenges in expressing reminders with diverse and complex logic. Based on these findings, we refined the system and evaluated it in Study 2 (N=10), demonstrating improved handling of time-based, activity-based, sensor-based, and state-based conditions. Our results highlight the diversity and ambiguity of user expressions and show that conversational guidance can help structure these expressions into flexible, context-aware reminders.

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Reina Szeyi Chan, Sujendra Jayant Gharat, Maya Lampi, Yueran Jia, Avi K Srinivasan, Xiang Zhi Tan. 2026-05-21. Remind Me To Check The Stove Before I Leave The House: Authoring Personalized Context-Aware Smart Home Reminders Using Everyday Language. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23085

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