Engaging Design for Energy Conservation in Households

Energy Coac

North Korea: Fading Totalitarianism in the "Hermit Kingdom"

North Korea is perceived by many as one of the most totalitarian societies of modern time. But in the wake of the economic collapse of the 1990s, North Korean totalitarianism has grappled with new conditions. This paper examines how the country’s totalitarian character has been upheld through the institutional changes instigated by the economic collapse and subsequent famine in the country. It strives to answer whether today’s North Korea should still be characterized as a totalitarian society, and, if not, what system then governs the country.North Korea; Totalitarianism; Authoritarianism; Institutional Change; Planned Economy; Social Control

The aesthetic zone of interaction. How are aesthetic design qualities experienced?

The aim of the present position paper is to raise issues concerning aesthetic experience in relation to an ongoing work of designing an artefact encouraging video reporting of personal experiences. The work serves as an example of a design experiment where aesthetic qualities are emphasized, but where the resulting interactions have not yet been analyzed in relation to these qualities. Our position is that the aesthetics of an interactive artefact evolves in the interactive zone between people who use it and the artefact itself. The aesthetic qualities are, thus, crystallized in the use of the artefact – whether it ranks high on a usability scale or not. Just as usability qualities, the aesthetic qualities contain contextual factors of its users, such as their pre-comprehension of the artefact, their cultural background and their emotional states. Furthermore, they include the context of the artefact, such as its physical design and the environment of its use. Our standpoint is consistent with Shusterman’s pragmatist approach to aesthetics, as related by Petersen et al. [2]. This approach promotes aesthetics of use rather than aesthetics of appearance. The experience of aesthetics lies in the interaction with the artefact rather than merely in the visual perception of it

Promoting New Patterns in Household Energy Consumption with Pervasive Learning Games

Engaging computer games can be used to change energy consumption patterns in the home. PowerAgent is a pervasive game for Java-enabled mobile phones that is designed to influence everyday activities and use of electricity in the domestic setting. PowerAgent is connected to the household’s automatic electricity meter reading equipment via the cell network, and this setup makes it possible to use actual consumption data in the game. In this paper, we present a two-level model for cognitive and behavior learning, and we discuss the properties of PowerAgent in relation to the underlying situated learning, social learning, and persuasive technology components that we have included in the game

Evaluation of a Pervasive Game for Domestic Energy Engagement Among Teenagers

In this article, we present Power Agent—a pervasive game designed to encourage teenagers and their families to reduce energy consumption in the home. The ideas behind this mobile phonebased game are twofold; to transform the home environment and its devices into a learning arena for hands-on experience with electricity usage and to promote engagement via a team competition scheme. We report on the game’s evaluation with six teenagers and their families who played the game for ten days in two cities in Sweden. Data collection consisted of home energy measurements before, during, and after a game trial, in addition to interviews with participants at the end of the evaluation. The results suggest that the game concept was highly efficient in motivating and engaging the players and their families to change their daily energy-consumption patterns during the game trial. Although the evaluation does not permit any conclusions as to whether the game had any postgame effects on behavior, we can conclude that the pervasive persuasive game approach appears to be highly promising in regard to energy conservation and similar fields or issues

Challenges in Energy Awareness: a Swedish case of heating consumption in households

An efficient and sustainable energy system is an important factor when minimising the environmental impact caused by the cities. We have worked with questions on how to construct a more direct connection between customers-­‐citizens and a provider of district heating for negotiating notions of comfort in relation to heating and hot tap water use. In this paper we present visualisation concepts of such connections and reflect on the outcomes in terms of the type of data needed for sustainability assessment, as well as the methods explored for channelling information on individual consumption and environmental impact between customers and the provider of district heating. We have defined challenges in sustainable design for consumer behaviour change in the case of reducing heat and hot water consumption in individual households: (1) The problematic relation between individual behaviour steering and system level district heating, (2) The complexity of environmental impact as indicator for behaviour change, and (3) Ethical considerations concerning the role of the designer

Marianne Moore: Facets of the Crystal

Marianne Mooore\u27s poetry embodies two different types of work. As well as the objective poetry that her contemporaries called modernist or Imagist (labels which she rejected), she also wrote quite personal, subjective poems. Two factors, theme and subject matter, unify her work and give evidence of her distinct poetic voice. The content and form of Moore\u27s work developed from her personal life and interests. In her childhood, loss of a beloved grandfather and changes of household, as well as a lifelong attachment to her mother, affected the poet deeply, as evidenced by her consistent theme of protection. Exotic animals populate her poems, displaying their natural means of protection. Her early interest in painting also found a place in her poetry, as many objects of art became subjects for her pen. The objectivity and meticulous style found in her work both go back to her love of biology and scientific method which she acquired in her days as a student at Bryn Mawr. Marianne Moore\u27s style endeared her to the avant garde poets of New York in the early decades of the 20th century. T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and others found her clinical objectivity ideal as they worked to develop poetry along similar lines. Moore retained her poetic abilities and popularity into her seventh decade, yet she did not even consider herself a poet, saying that her work could only be called poetry because it fit in no other category. We can rectify this seeming contradiction by realizing that, as she says in the final revision of Poetry, (The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore. New York: Macmillan / Viking, 1981, 36) the reader can find in poetry a place for the genuine. For Marianne Moore, the genuine can be objective, the undisputable truth of science or subjective, the emotional honesty of art

Laser annealing of ion implanted CZ silicon for solar cell junction formation

The merits of large spot size pulsed laser annealing of phosphorus implanted, Czochralski grown silicon for function formation of solar cells are evaluated. The feasibility and requirements are also determined to scale-up a laser system to anneal 7.62 cm diameter wafers at a rate of one wafer/second. Results show that laser annealing yields active, defect-free, shallow junction devices. Functional cells with AM 1 conversion efficiencies up to 15.4% for 2 x 2 cm and 2 x 4 cm sizes were attained. For larger cells, 7.62 cm dia., conversion efficiencies ranged up to 14.5%. Experiments showed that texture etched surfaces are not compatible with pulsed laser annealing due to the surface melting caused by the laser energy. When compared with furnace annealed cells, the laser annealed cells generally exhibited conversion efficiencies which were equal to or better than those furnace annealed. In addition, laser annealing has greater throughput potential

Coffee maker patterns and the design of energy feedback artefacts

Smart electricity meters and home displays are being installed in people’s homes with the assumption that households will make the necessary efforts to reduce their electricity consumption. However, present solutions do not sufficiently account for the social implications of design. There is a potential for greater savings if we can better understand how such designs affect behaviour. In this paper, we describe our design of an energy awareness artefact – the Energy AWARE Clock – and discuss it in relation to behavioural processes in the home. A user study is carried out to study the deployment of the prototype in real domestic contexts for three months. Results indicate that the Energy AWARE Clock played a significant role in drawing households’ attention to their electricity use. It became a natural part of the household and conceptions of electricity became naturalized into informants’ everyday language