Engaging Design for Energy Conservation in Households

Energy Coac

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

“Mama, It’s Peacetime!”: Planning, Shifting, and Designing Activities in the Smart Grid Scenario

In this paper, we describe a research-through-design (RtD) approach to investigate the potential of households’ electricity load balancing in the smart grid. Through the design probe “Peacetime”, householders explore peak hours as opportunities for serene and non-electricity consuming activities. During the 2 weeks, Peacetime was deployed in the homes of three households to explore an alternative framing of non-use of electricity to the commonly used framework for prompting people with feedback on their consumption. Households’ active load balancing included planning of, replacing, reorganizing, and skipping everyday domestic activities. Results indicate that focus could be shifted from restricting electricity use to creating alternatives – leading to a positive framing of load balancing. The scenarios reflected in this paper differ from those of rational energy managers basing decisions of domestic life on complex facts and figures. Scenarios from the study portray how planning, reorganization, and time shifting of activities may be obtained with soft means emphasizing values of well-being and respect of the variation of households’ social contexts

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

CLOCKWISE – Smarta lösningar till stöd för energieffektiva beteenden Slutrapport för forskningsprojekt 24, CERBOF 2:2 Beteende, processer och styrmedel

Människans beteende spelar en avgörande roll vid energibesparing och energieffektivisering. Interaktiv teknik har potential att visualisera energi och därmed göra användningen mera begriplig för gemene man. I projektet CLOCKWISE utrustades hushåll under en period med en prototyp, Energy Aware Clock, som ger en grafisk återgivning av hushållselen i realtid. Studien syftade till att undersöka prototypens inverkan på beteende både kvalitativt och kvantitativt. Teman för den kvalitativa studien var användningsmönster, medvetenhet om användningen av el samt nyttogörandet av återkoppling (feedback). I den kvantitativa delen har olika eldata och inomhustemperaturer loggats med fokus på minskning och temperatur variationer. Resultaten visar att hushållen har lärt sig om sin normala vardagsanvändning av el och de har upptäckt och kartlagt utrustning som drar mycket el. Under de tre månadernas testperiod har två tydliga faser identifierats, den första upptäckande och den andra bekräftande. Resultat från mätningar, projektets kvantitativa del, visar på hög komplexitet med många osäkerhetsfaktorer och gör det svårt att sammanfatta några säkra slutsatser. Trots rådande osäkerheter i underlaget finns indikationer på att de deltagande hushållen reducerat användningen av hushållsel med upp till ca 10%. Inomhustemperaturerna har inte påverkats under projektets gång. En koppling till utomhustemperaturen vid snabba förändringar kan dock iakttagas

Social interactions for a sustainable lifestyle: The design of an experimental case study

Every day we face numerous lifestyle decisions, some dictated by habits and some more conscious, which may or may not promote sustainable living. Aided by digital technology, sustainable behaviors can diffuse within social groups and inclusive communities. This paper outlines a longitudinal experimental study of social influence in behavioral changes toward sustainability, in the context of smart residential homes. Participants are residing in the housing on campus referred to as KTH Live-In Lab, whose behaviors are observed w.r.t. key lifestyle choices, such as food, resources, mobility, consumption, and environmental citizenship. The focus is on the preparatory phase of the case study and the challenges and limitations encountered during its setup. In particular, this work proposes a definition of sustainability indicators for environmentally significant behaviors, and hypothesizes that, through digitalization of a household into a social network of interacting tenants, sustainable living can be promoted. Preliminary results confirm the feasibility of the proposed experimental methodology.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Presented at the 2023 IFAC World Conference, Yokohama, Japa