Getting this learning reinforced every few days: Your home automation should learn and evolve to understand your wife/partner(and her/his habits), not the other way around. If you are relying on your partner to learn how to use the home automation, then that is a path towards design failure.
...just saying.
"when you speak in absolutes, you are absolutely wrong most of the time"
Good sentiment, and I largely agree, but I think there's a little give and take / adjustment in the adoption of any new technology. To make something infinitely flexible requires infinite sensors and data points, not real practical from a cost standpoint.
Varies greatly based on partner interest in automation, but this is unfortunately completely true in my case. Wife has little interest in most automation that is truly automatic. She's a control freak and would rather do most everything manually than have it magically happen.
The only "automation" she does like is having a Pico every five feet in the house so she can control things via button presses. So we have 20 Picos and counting...
If i attempt to stick picos, through the house, I am sure I will soon be sleeping outside the house 
But yes, my wife seems to prefer manual control over magical events(which can sometimes go wrong...e.g. kids screaming if the lights turned off during bath, or bath lights did not turn on as motion sensor failure to trigger motion even for whatever reason)
In a room, I put a small motion sensor on a window sill, with the request that the window blinds be not closed till the end, but be left open just around 3-4 cm to allow for the sensor to continue to work...but that was a no-go ask. The blinds have to be completely closed. Now I had to move the sensor to a spot which is slightly less perfect as it also see outside the door, and hence every time somebody passes by the room, the lights turn on, which again is a UX problem.
This phrase piqued my interest. It belies the meaning of the word "automation" (roughly, applying technology to perform tasks previously done by a human to improve efficiency and reliability). If the household must now do additional tasks to accommodate the sensor and yield satisfactory results, then it was not automation.
I have only been on this home automation journey for a year or so, but we are preparing to move in the next few months. I asked my wife what she thinks about having to manually use switches until I can get to all of the updates at the new house. She looked at me like we had lost a war and been sold into servitude, because our automations match our actual behaviors instead of an ideal technical model.
Count my wife as not interested in or enjoying Home Automation. Most of the time she just ignores it. Some of the time, when it does not suit her needs at the moment, it annoys her. And she is quick to point out when it is not working properly (unreliable Z-Wave).
My wife could care less about my smart home preoccupation except that anything I do she wants it to just work and be simple and useful enough no one has to think too hard about it. She helps keep me grounded as to what a real world implementation should be and I think that is very helpful.
I think we may be married to the same person 
My wife is the same way to. As long as it doesn't bug her and it just works ahe is fine with whatever tinkering i do. Well that and she has to have a reasonable manual way to control everything as well incase the automation fails for some reason.
Amazing how far this goes. It's a must. Everything must have an easily accessible manual option. No, asking Google/Alexa or going into some app isn't going to cut it.
Download the Hubitat app
