Designing and Evaluating Next-Generation Thermographic Systems to Support Residential Energy Audits

Buildings account for 41% of primary energy consumption in the United States—more than any other sector—and contribute to an increasing portion of carbon dioxide emissions (33% in 1980 vs. 40% in 2009). To help address this problem, the U.S. Department of Energy recommends conducting energy audits to identify sources of inefficiencies that contribute to rising energy use. One effective technique used during energy audits is thermography. Thermographic-based energy auditing activities involve the use of thermal cameras to identify, diagnose, and document energy efficiency issues in the built environment that are visible as anomalous patterns of electromagnetic radiation. These patterns may indicate locations of air leakages, areas of missing insulation, or moisture issues in the built environment. Sensor improvements and falling costs have increased the popularity of this auditing technique, but its effectiveness is often mediated by the training and experience of the auditor. Moreover, given the increasing availability of commodity thermal cameras and the potential for pervasive thermographic scanning in the built environment, there is a surprising lack of understanding about people’s perceptions of this sensing technology and the challenges encountered by an increasingly diverse population of end-users. Finally, there are few specialized tools and methods to support the auditing activities of end-users. To help address these issues, my work focuses on three areas: (i) formative studies to understand and characterize current building thermography practices, benefits, and challenges, (ii) human-centered explorations into the role of automation and the potential of pervasive thermographic scanning in the built environment, and (iii) evaluations of novel, interactive building thermography systems. This dissertation presents a set of studies that qualitatively characterizes building thermography practitioners, explores prototypes of novel thermographic systems at varying fidelity, and synthesizes findings from several field deployments. This dissertation contributes to the fields of sustainability, computer science, and HCI through: (i) characterizations of the end-users of thermography, (ii) critical feedback on proposed automated thermographic solutions, (iii) the design and evaluation of a novel longitudinal thermography system designed to augment the data collection and analysis activities of end-users, and (iv) design recommendations for future thermographic systems

Incorporating Sustainable HCI Research into Design Practice

The rapid replacement cycle of consumer electronics, leading to wasteful use of scarce resources and a growing amount of electronic waste, poses a major threat to a sustainable future. Technological advancements of research, such as in Human-Computer Interaction, contribute to this development and therefore have a responsibility to combat those problems. Theoretical research in Sustainable HCI has developed a variety of design principles and frameworks that can be used to address issues of obsolescence; however, they rarely leave the realm of theory and make their way into design practice. This phenomenon is well-known in the general field of HCI, often referred to as the theory-practice gap. In this thesis, we explore ways to bridge the theory-practice gap and address the obsolescence of consumer electronics by applying Sustainable HCI theory to product design practice. To lay the foundation of our research and understand people’s motivation for replacing products, we conducted a survey and follow-up interviews about the most important factors in people’s decision-making process when purchasing consumer electronics. Based on the insights, we took one of the most established frameworks from Sustainable HCI, the Attachment Framework, and asked product designers to include it into their design process. The Attachment Framework offers a set of principles that lead to a deeper bond between an object and its owner, preventing premature disposal and is a particularly powerful tool due to its emotional appeal. Through a product design activity with two groups of seven designers, one of which was given the Attachment Framework, we conducted a comparative study to gauge the impact of the Sustainable HCI design principles on the product design process and its outcome. The mixed results led us to formulate a set of challenges for the application of theoretical frameworks to design practice, which we sought to investigate on further by implementing two different approaches: A web tool to organize the results of background research called StickyDesignSpace, and a brainstorming app called InspiredDesign. Our final evaluation yields insights into ways how Sustainable HCI design knowledge can be successfully transferred to practitioners outside of the realm of research