Should the smart home community keep saying Wife Approval Factor?
I'm inspired by the "open home” as a vision for the smart home, where “open home” not only places value on privacy, choice, and sustainability, but also on inclusivity for all. Let's phase out non-inclusive language like Wife Approval Factor, and use more inclusive terms, like Home Approval Factor.
Introduction
Instead of a product review or tech tutorial, I want to talk about a long-standing issue that I’ve observed in the broader smart home, and tech community.
I love smart home — it’s what inspired me to start this channel. And after years engaging with this community in Reddit posts, Facebook groups, and YouTube comments, I continue to be inspired by how helpful this community is.
Who among us hasn’t had an answer to a stubborn home automation problem solved by a fellow community member who was just being helpful. I know I have tons of personal examples when I’ve learned from all of you.
One of the reasons that I feel comfortable reaching out is that I feel a part of the community. But, I know this is not true for everyone. The language that we use to communicate with each other matters. When we use non-inclusive language, it makes others feel like “this thing that we are doing here” is not for them.
The most prevalent example of this is the term, “Wife Approval Factor,” but the term “wife” also gets swapped out for other demographic groups, like Boomers.
Such language has been around for decades, and I am definitely not the first to raise this issue. I’m also not attempting to speak on behalf of anyone else. Rather, I just want to see us do better.
Around a year and a half ago, Paulus, the founder of Home Assistant, published a letter on this topic. He emphasized that the Home Assistant community is not “just for men” because “only men love tech.”
Yet, I routinely encounter non-inclusive language regarding if something “will pass the Wife Approval Factor test” whenever I go through online threads.
There are several potential biases at play here:
- Stereotyping, where generalizations are applied about groups of people without regard for individual differences.
- In-Group/Out-Group, where preferential treatment is given to those we perceive as being in-group, and not to those perceived as being out-group.
- Group Think, where we adopt the opinion of the group to maintain harmony, setting aside personal beliefs or staying quiet when we disagree.
If you live with other people, or if you just have people who visit your home regularly, chances are you care about making a smart home that works for everyone in the home. I see that spirit in this community.
But just as we want to build a smart home that is welcoming, we should also build a smart home community that is welcoming — where all feel accepted to participate, regardless of gender, age, or anything else.
In that letter from Paulus, he shared a video by Isabella that was published over three years ago. In it, she provided more history on “acceptance factor” terminology, and offered helpful frameworks to consider instead. I highly recommend watching it.
I made an earlier video on how to start a smart home. It was the first video I made that also featured my spouse. I didn’t want to do a video on how to start a smart home without discussing the effects it has on everyone in the home. The main thing that we talked about together was the importance of open communication and understanding the needs of the other “users.” There are often many users of your smart home, and the product that you are delivering should work for them, not the other way around.
We build a smart home for the home, and that’s the approval that we should seek: the Home Approval Factor, as Madelena coined it following her Reddit post on this topic.
I don’t claim to have any personal authority or moral superiority in the smart home community. I’m just someone who is inspired by “the open home” as a vision for the smart home, where “open home” not only places value on privacy, choice, and sustainability, but also on inclusivity for all.
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Michael Leen