Smart home technologies are becoming more present in our everyday life. At the moment, the focus of these technologies lays with creating pleasance by simplifying operations and leaving users out of the loop. However, research shows that this focus results in (unwanted) labour and forms of pleasance that easily come and go. Therefore, this research explores what would happen if smart home technologies were designed for collaboration between the inhabitants and the smart home. Focussing on collaborative cooking with the smart home, this paper describes a field deployment (N=6) of the research product “Dabba Experience”. The results suggest that such collaboration in household labour can result in convenient pleasance. However, this isn’t easy, since the balance of outsourcing versus control is very personal and people are initially unwilling to take care of their new technology.
