Are ambient smart environments sufficient for developing good habits?

Ambient smart environments (ASEs) are said to demonstrate the utility of technologically-infused spaces to issues of health and wellbeing by facilitating adaptive behaviour. In particular, ASEs have been positioned as an environment able to disrupt routine thoughts and behaviours, and to regulate optimal levels of uncertainty (Aydin et al., 2019; Hipólito et al., 2023; White & Hipólito, 2023; White & Miller, 2023; White et al., 2024; Verbeek, 2009). Here, we critically consider this perspective, and ask whether ASEs alone are sufficient for the development of good habits. We consider how current approaches that assume their success may overlook the contribution of other cognitive processes and environmental factors relevant to the formation and maintenance of habits. In particular, we suggest that experience-dependent learning and feedback processes are likely required to reinforce more stable, long-term (and healthier) habits. To do so, we provide a reappraisal of the role of affordances in ASEs, and examine how varying an agent’s environmental context can selectively (and differentially) engage and sustain motivational states over time. Having critically assessed these features of ASEs, we provide a constructive account of affordance-mediated interactions within ASEs and the built, physical environment, termed design-centred environments (DEs). We consider how features of DEs encourage adaptive behaviour through the optimisation of more open-ended, agent-centred patterns of interactivity. We then suggest that the stable embeddings of DEs, in combination with the dynamic flexibility of ASEs, can provide a more sustainable approach to the development of good habits. We aim to show that these hybrid environments not only facilitate skillful activities and routines, but also take into account the complexity of behavioural change. We consider how this approach bears on ethical concerns related to human agency. Finally, we consider the integration of haptic technology as exemplary in its ability to not only reinforce good habits, but also the user’s understanding of their own activities as a cognitive agent within the technologically-laden environment.