The future is an electronic house from Orange

Helen Jones on a trial to shape the way we live

IMAGINE filling your bath or setting the video recorder while you are driving home from work and all with a quick call from your mobile phone. For one group of consumers, it will soon be reality.

Mobile phone carrier Orange has spent 2 million converting an ordinary house in Hertfordshire into a house of the future.

A family of five will move in shortly and the company will gauge their reactions to a range of "intelligent" appliances from a robotic lawn mower to a coffee machine that responds to voice commands.

Sue Lambert, head of business development for Orange says: "The house will serve as a research centre for Orange where we can develop commercial applications. We will see how the family likes the technology and create practical uses rather than technology for technology's sake."

It is not the only company to use human guinea pigs to test its latest technology. Elec-trolux and Ericsson have joined forces to provide a group of consumers in Sweden with " S c r e e n f r i d g e s " w h i c h download recipe ideas from the internet, store shopping lists and have a built-in video camera to record messages.

Electrolux spokesman Tom Wells says that providing the fridges free of charge to a large number of consumers is vital to its research and development.

"You can ask people in focus groups whether they would like to download recipes from the net on to a screen on their fridge and they say 'oh yes', but by putting them in people's homes we can see how they actually use the technology and find out whether they would be prepared to pay for it.

"Although it does cost a lot to carry out this type of research it gives you really in-depth information that you just couldn't get from a focus group."

Electrolux has also developed the world's first commercially available intelligent homes featuring heating and lighting which switches off automatically when there is no one at home and fingerprint activated security systems.

Six homes recently went on sale in Varmdo, Sweden and were quickly snapped up. Now the company is building a further 120 flats.

In Britain, BT has been playing Big Brother in the interests of consumer research. It has been filming families in their homes to find out how they respond to the internet and other forms of technology. The families were paid for taking part but soon forgot they were being filmed at all, says BT.

Marcus Hickman, associate director of the Henley Centre which organised the research for BT says: "There is a big difference between what people say they do and what they do in reality. This is a way of finding out how consumers act in real life. They might say 'I found that website difficult to use' and by filming them we can see exactly why that is."

Hickman says a growing number of clients are demand- ing this type of in-depth "ethnographic" consumer research.

"We have done it three times far and the results have been very enlightening," he added.

"We are currently working on further projects with Abbey National, the Royal Mail and BBC Online and I expect that more companies will want to get involved."

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