Do you know how many kwh of electricity you spend on average every day? How many liters of water you consume or what is the environmental impact of your everyday home activities?
What if you had a device at home that would show you in real-time how much you spend and most importantly -for some- how much that costs you?
The media coverage on global environmental change has been so substantial that only few people remain ignorant to how our individual actions directly affect the environment. Sooner or later, a plethora of our daily doings will have to be reconsidered and readjusted to accommodate a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle.
Even though a lot of promising work is being done at a global scale, the problem still persists due to our lack of understanding at an individual level. A more personal approach is introduced, by designer Elena Markitani, where we can be aware how little by little our daily choices and actions contribute to the whole.
As behavioral studies have shown how adjustable our attitude towards energy use is, it has been pointed out that we don’t use energy per se but we use products that use energy. These products are designed in such a way that it directly determines how we use them, which in turn determines the rate of energy consumption.
The ideal platform for the proposed device is a multi-touch screen interface since the purpose is to retrieve and represent data rather than inputting it. A multi-touch screen can also be very intuitive, due to the fact that there’s no actual effort in learning how to use it. A quick, easy and straightforward navigation is appealing to everyone, especially to people who are not comfortable with manipulating new technologies.
In detail the device will wirelessly be providing the user with:
-real-time data on the user’s current energy and water consumption.
-real-time data on the current energy and water prices.
-hourly/daily/weekly/monthly charts of his/her consumption and the cost so far.
-a list of all the current applications running in the house by selecting a room.
-ON/OFF control over each application.
-visual and aural feedback on the user’s behavior.
Visual feedback plays a crucial role, since it's mainly through the feedback process that the device will be warning the user.
Colors such as green and red have a universality that communicates certain ideas. Green is considered to designate notions of affirmation and safety, whereas red often implies danger or warning. In this case, red color signifies that power consumption is at very high levels and green color signifies that it is within normal levels.
What is special about this device is that its designer is not only concerned with usability issues but also on how the user can maintain a more environmentally aware self by interacting with the device.
Unfortunately the device is still in its early stages of design and it's effectiveness cannot be accurately tested. It is a problem that cannot be resolved by user-testing due to the fact that it is an out-of-context situation. Likely changes in user behavior can only occur in everyday living situations where the device will be used daily.
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