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MIT, in collaboration with TIAX, has created a mock-condo research center filled with sensors and cameras to track and record the behavior of its live-in volunteers. This new approach to research is undoubtedly the first of a wave of such created environments, in which all variables can be controlled and test subjects can become comfortable enough to behave naturally.

Critics of traditional research and testing methods say that studying people in a focus group facility to understand how they think and behave in the real world is like studying a lion in a cage to understand how lions behave in the jungle. Products and services designed and tested on subjects in laboratories frequently fail because of these context effects and the erroneous assumptions designers end up making about how people will behave in complex settings such as the home.

The home environment is on the verge of becoming a software environment. Consider downloading and running a program that runs on your home - a program that verbally reminds you of things, entertains you, allows your friends and family into your life with video and audio. Phillips has been researching this consumer electronic dimension with its live-in facility, the HomeLab. But for MIT's PlaceLab, most of the R&D interest currently comes from the healthcare industry which is looking into whether you can change peoples' behavior and get them to do preventative care and stay within their health regimens with proactive reminder systems. (Fad diets of the future will likely be branded regimen programs bought and sold like software is today.)

Or, of even more value, is the development of techniques, using the rich sensing atmosphere of the PlaceLab, that will recognize patterns of sleep, eating, socializing, recreation, etc and provide early indicators of emerging health problems. (Imagine your house telling you you are about to get a cold and should probably not go out drinking.)

Among the other issues PlaceLab will be studying:
-privacy and trust including opt-out strategies and the fine line between tolerable and intrusive.
-actual in-home media consumtion habits and patterns (of interest to the Nielsons of the world.)
-what information people find useful and worthwhile (do people really want to know how much they are paying per hour to run various appliances, what about indoor air quality reports, what about whether it is warm enough outside to open the windows?)

Discovery Channel Canada video piece on the PlaceLab