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  <front>
    <journal-meta />
    <article-meta>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>VETUS - Visual Exploration of Time Use Data to Support Environmental Assessment of Lifestyles</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Jan C. T. Bieser</string-name>
          <email>jan.bieser@ifi.uzh.ch</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">1</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>David Haas</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">1</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Lorenz M. Hilty</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff0">0</xref>
        </contrib>
        <aff id="aff0">
          <label>0</label>
          <institution>Department of Informatics, University, of Zurich, Technology and Society Lab, Empa, Materials Science and Technology</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>St. Gallen</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="CH">Switzerland</country>
        </aff>
        <aff id="aff1">
          <label>1</label>
          <institution>Department of Informatics, University, of Zurich</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>Zurich</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="CH">Switzerland</country>
        </aff>
      </contrib-group>
      <abstract>
        <p>- The time-use (or activity) patterns individuals perform on a typical day - their individual lifestyles - fundamentally shape our society and the environment we live in. Not only are lifestyles evolving over time, driven by societal and technological change, they also significantly contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 12 “responsible consumption and production”, namely through the resource use and emissions associated with goods and services consumed to perform activities. We created an interactive, browser-based tool to visualize and intuitively explore statistical time-use data. The visualization helps to gain an overview about the available data, identify and compare common time-use patterns and draw up hypotheses about the relationship between changes in lifestyles and their social and environmental consequences. We use the tool to compare time-use data from different regions, time periods as well as socio-economic and demographic backgrounds and estimate the associated energy consumption. From a time-use perspective, any technological change which triggers changes in time allocation can only be environmentally sustainable if the environmental impact of the total of the activities performed after the change is lower than before. Index Terms- Time use, time-use data, lifestyles, activities, energy intensity of activities, visualization, sustainability.</p>
      </abstract>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <body>
    <sec id="sec-1">
      <title>I. INTRODUCTION</title>
      <p>
        Achieving “responsible consumption and production”
patterns has been manifested as Sustainable Development Goal
12 by the United Nations [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">1</xref>
        ]. Individual lifestyles, for this
study defined as “dynamic pattern[s] of consumption activities”
[2, p. 111] directly impact the environment through the
resource use and emissions associated with goods and services
consumed to perform the activities.
      </p>
      <p>
        Lifestyles can be analyzed from various perspectives, e.g.
from a functional perspective (products fulfilling stable needs),
from a neo-classical budget constraint perspective (products
fulfilling individual needs with a budget-constraint on
consumption) or from a time-use perspective (individual needs
and utility with a time constraint on consumption) [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
        ]. Time
use is a suitable perspective for the analysis of lifestyles,
because time budget is naturally limited and constant (24 h per
day) and the activities to which people assign their time can be
related to environmental impacts [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
        ], [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
        ]. For example,
someone can spend an evening reading a book at home or
taking a trip with a private car (activities with significantly
different environmental impacts). In that sense, goods and
services are “best perceived not as ends in themselves [...], but
as instrumental to the performance of an activity” [4, p. 825].
Building on these premises, time use of individuals has been
the subject of interest in various disciplines yielding scientific
theories such as the theory of time allocation [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref5">5</xref>
        ], the time-use
approach [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
        ], social practice theory [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ], [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7">7</xref>
        ], time geography
[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref8">8</xref>
        ], wealth in time [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref9">9</xref>
        ], [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10">10</xref>
        ], or activity-based models of
transport demand [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref11">11</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>
        At the same time, individual lifestyles are subject to
continuous change driven by societal and technological developments
[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">12</xref>
        ]. For example, as people are increasingly moving to urban
environments, the commuting patterns – and thus the time
spent in transport – can change. Also, the increasing use of
information and communication technology (ICT) leads to a
relaxation of some time and space constraints of activities [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13">13</xref>
        ].
For example, “virtual mobility” solutions, such as
telecommuting or videoconferencing, can have direct impact
on the time spent in transport [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref14">14</xref>
        ]–[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref16">16</xref>
        ]. They can even
eradicate the need to live close to the employer and thus change
land-use patterns (e.g. the attractiveness of living in urban or
rural environments) and commuting patterns in the long run
[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref17">17</xref>
        ], [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref18">18</xref>
        ]. To summarize, individual lifestyles (i) are a major
determinant of environmental impact, (ii) are subject to
continuous change, and, (iii) for these reasons, have been of
interest in many academic disciplines.
      </p>
      <p>
        Today, large collections of time-use data – diaries of the
time individuals spend on activities – from various countries
and time frames is available [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref19">19</xref>
        ]–[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref21">21</xref>
        ]. In this paper, we
present a tool for visual exploration of time-use data (VETUS),
developed to process the data provided by the Multinational
Time Use Study (MTUS) of the Centre for Time Use Research
at the University of Oxford [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref20">20</xref>
        ]. The tool can be used to
compare individual time-use patterns (the time individuals spend on
various activities on a 24-hour day) from different regions, time
frames as well as socio-economic and demographic
backgrounds, and to draw up hypotheses on environmental impacts.
As humans are good at visual perception [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref22">22</xref>
        ], visualization of
time-use data can help researchers to explore time-use data in
an intuitive way [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref23">23</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>We analyzed existing work in the field of time-use
research, environmental impact assessment of everyday activities
and data visualization, developed the tool considering
visualization trade-offs and appropriate visualization idioms, and used
it for environmental assessments of lifestyles extracted from
time-use data.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-2">
      <title>II. TIME-USE DATA, ACTIVITIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL</title>
      <p>IMPACTS</p>
      <p>
        The time-use approach is a perspective to analyze lifestyles
from a consumption perspective focusing on temporal
constraints (as opposed to financial budget constraints). A time-use
pattern is an observable set of activities and the time spent on
these activities, in our case by an individual in 24-hours.
Timeuse data provided by the MTUS describes the time (in minutes)
individuals spend on distinct activities on a specific day and
combines over a million diary days from 23 countries from the
1960s to the 2010s [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref20">20</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>Jalas describes sustainable lifestyles as “the requirement of
no increase in the materials-intensity of everyday life” [2, p.
113]. By applying decomposition analysis on household
expenditure, energy consumption, time-use and input-output data,
he estimates the energy intensities of activities for Finnish
households considering direct energy use (e.g. the fuel
consumption of a car) and indirect energy use (“energy use of
producing the goods and services that are needed in the activity”
(p. 114) – Tab. I).</p>
      <p>Due to the high energy intensity of transportation,
outsideof-home activities, even if not very energy-intensive as such,
can cause relatively high energy consumption if transportation
is included. Sleeping has an energy intensity of zero since
domestic heating is not allocated to any activitiy. Work has an
energy intensity of zero since no final consumption is allocated
to it.</p>
      <p>
        Many researchers followed this approach, e.g. Aal et al.
[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref25">25</xref>
        ] estimated the energy intensity of leisure activities in
Norway in 2001, Minx and Baiocchi [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4">4</xref>
        ] estimated activity material
intensities in West Germany in 1990, Yu et al. [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref26">26</xref>
        ] activity
CO2 intensities in China in 2008 and Druckmann et al. [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
        ]
activity greenhouse gas intensities in Great Britain in 2005.
      </p>
      <p>
        The time-use approach can also be used to explain indirect
environmental effects of technological change. For example,
telecommuting allows employees to work from home, save
commuting time and the related energy consumption. However,
net energy savings depend on how the time saved is spent.
Depending on the energy intensity of the substitute activities, the
environmental benefits can be partially compensated or even
overcompensated for – a phenomenon called time rebound
effect [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
        ]. The time-use approach is especially useful to
investigate such rebound effects because of the hard 24-hour
constraint, which provides a natural system boundary to behavior.
Exemplary research questions that can be investigated with the
time-use approach are: Does a given ICT use case increase or
decrease the environmental impact? Does a given ICT use case
increase or decrease the time individuals spend in transport?
Does a given ICT use case increase the pace of life (“the speed
and compression of actions and experiences” [27, p. 8/9])? Do
people who live in urban environments spend less or more time
traveling than people who live in rural environments?
      </p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-3">
      <title>III. VISUALIZATION</title>
      <sec id="sec-3-1">
        <title>A. Data Visualization</title>
        <p>
          Visualization “transforms the symbolic into the geometric, [..]
offers a method for seeing the unseen” and “enriches the
process of scientific discovery and fosters profound and
unexpected insights” [23, p. 3]. Specifically, as the volume of
available data is increasing at a tremendous pace, it becomes more
challenging to derive meaningful insights from the data without
adequate visualization [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref28">28</xref>
          ]. Visualization helps especially
researchers who want to explore data to find interesting
hypotheses. Visualization methods are suitable where human pattern
recognition capabilities are to be supported, rather than
replaced, in our case for the exploratory analysis of time-use
patterns to support environmental assessment of lifestyles [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref29">29</xref>
          ].
        </p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-3-2">
        <title>B. Used data</title>
        <p>For developing the application, we focus on the ‘adult’
aggregate dataset using the 69-activity typology. In this dataset,
each record represents a 24-hour observation day, providing the
time spent on 69 activities plus socio-economic and
demographic variables of the diary person. We compared the
variables with socio-economic and demographic indicators
commonly used to describe populations (e.g. by federal statistical
offices) and selected 96 variables (all 69 activity plus 27
demographic and socio-economic variables, Tab. II) to be used as a
core set for visualization We did not include energy intensities
of activities directly into the visualization because such data is
only available for few time frames and regions and has to be
considered in a later step of the process.</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-3-3">
        <title>C. Visualization requirements and trade-offs</title>
        <p>The visualization tool should enable the user to browse
through available time-use data in an exploratory, tentative way
and allow to derive initial interpretations of differences in
timeuse patterns among regions or time-frames or among groups
defined by socio-economic and demographic properties of
individuals. Therefore, the tool needs to display the time spent on
activities in an intelligible and comprehensible way and allow
the researcher to set filters on geographic, temporal,
socioeconomic and demographic variables. After having applied
filters to the dataset, visualized the data and derived an
interpretation, the user should be well prepared for applying
statistics software, e.g. to test a hypothesis1.</p>
        <p>
          To meet these requirements, we needed to address several
trade-offs caused by three limitations of resources (humans,
computers, displays) [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref30">30</xref>
          ]:
        </p>
        <p>1) Cognitive limitations of humans: The dataset contains in
total 69 activity variables and 27 demographic and
socioeconomic variables. This choice could be criticized for
inducing a bias by limiting the flexibility for the researcher. On the
other hand, including a high number of variables in the core set
can harm the simplicity and usability of the tool.</p>
        <p>2) Limitations in displays: To increase usability, we decided
that the tool should be accessible through a standard web
browser and show all required information on one single page,
without the need to scroll. Therefore, space for visual elements
1 For detailed investigations of MTUS data users should also refer to the
MTUS User Guide: https://www.timeuse.org/MTUS-User-Guide
is limited by the size of the page, which is bound to (normal)
display size.</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-3-4">
        <title>3) Limitation in computing power: The number of included</title>
        <p>variables, the size of the dataset and the used visual elements
impact the performance of the tool with respect to response
time in displaying data.</p>
        <p>D. Selected visualization idioms</p>
        <p>“A vis idiom is a distinct approach to creating and
manipulating visual representations” [30, p. 10], i.e. “any specific
sequence of data enrichment and enhancement transformations,
visualization mappings, and rendering transformations that
produce an abstract display of a scientific dataset” and are
usually based on “intuitive analogies between familiar objects and
[…] physical abstractions” (e.g. bar, scatterplot or line charts)
[31, p. 77].</p>
        <p>We first created a prototype to test different visualization
idioms and then developed the final version, which is described
in the following.</p>
        <p>1) Time spent on 69 activities by day of the week: Time-use
patterns can significantly change from day to day, especially
between working and non-working days. Therefore, we
visualize the average time spent by individuals on 69 activities in
minutes by day of the week. This yields a matrix of 69
activities by seven days. Displaying such a large amount of
information is challenging and can best be done with heat maps
(Fig. 1), an intuitive way to display matrix alignment of two
key attributes. Each matrix cell holds an area mark denoting a
quantitative value attribute encoded with color (time spent on
activities). Additionally, when hovering over a field, the
average time spent on the activity on the respective day will be
displayed.</p>
        <p>
          2) Time spent on activity categories: Visually comparing 69
distinct activities is cognitively challenging, which is why we
show the average time spent on eight activity categories as
described in column 3 of Tab. 1. For displaying this variable,
we use a pie chart, to visualize how the single parts (activity
categories) contribute to the whole (24 hours) [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref30">30</xref>
          ].
        </p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-3-5">
        <title>3) Day of the week, age group, family status, working hours:</title>
        <p>
          Days of the week and family status are categorical variables,
whereas age and working hours are continuous variables
which are often transformed into categorical variables by
creating bins (e.g. age groups “18-30” or “30-40”). These
variables are mainly used to filter the data set and compare
timeuse patterns among individuals with different demographic
and socio-economic backgrounds. Also, the number of
observations for each category of a filter variable can be displayed
to provide information on the distribution of the
socioeconomic and demographic variables. We used bar charts (Fig.
2) to visualize the distributions of these variables because they
are useful to compare quantitative values of different
categories of a variable [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref30">30</xref>
          ].
        </p>
        <p>4) Occupation: The occupation of the diarist is also a
categorical variable, however with significantly more categories
than the variables described above (MTUS distinguishes 14
occupation categories such as “farming, forestry and fishing”).
We used a pie chart (Fig. 3) because bar charts require much
space as the number of categories increases. The limitation of
display size then pose a harder constraint than the fact that the
legibility of pie charts suffers with increasing numbers of
categories.</p>
        <p>
          5) Country where the survey was conducted: The most
natural way to display the country where the survey was
conducted is a choropleth map (Fig. 4). This is a geographic map of
regions which displays a quantitative attribute (i.e. the number
of observations from each country) encoded as color over the
different regions [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref30">30</xref>
          ]. In our case, the more color-intense a
country, the more observations for that particular country are
contained in the dataset.
        </p>
        <p>6) Year the survey was conducted: For visualizing the year
the diary was kept, we created a timeline using a vertical bar
chart (Fig. 5). The vertical axis denotes the number of
observations and the horizontal axis shows the years. Users can filter
the dataset by selecting a time frame using a draggable selector
frame.</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-3-6">
        <title>7) Further demographic and socio-economic variables: Fi</title>
        <p>nally, we wanted to improve the filter options for the user,
while staying within the display limitation of one single page.
For this purpose, we added additional select lists for variables
with few filter options at the bottom of the page (Fig. 6). The
number of observations by category for these variables is
displayed as a number in the end of each category name.</p>
        <p>At startup of the tool, the whole data set is loaded and the
visualization idioms are created showing the average time spent
on activities and the number of observations by category for the
described variables. In order to compare time spent on different
activities by regions, daytimes and other variables, users can
filter the data set by clicking on variable categories in the
visualization idioms (e.g. the bar representing a specific age group)
and select/deselect it. When deselected, all observations of the
respective category are filtered and the displayed values for
each other variable are recalculated and updated in all
visualization idioms.</p>
        <p>Finally, we show the number of currently selected
observations at the top center of the page, and a menu for options in the
sidebar. The whole dashboard (Fig. 7) can be considered a
visualization idiom itself, combining the idioms described above.
All charts are interconnected and changes in one chart trigger
changes in the other charts.</p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-4">
      <title>IV. IMPLEMENTATION</title>
      <sec id="sec-4-1">
        <title>A. Software technologies</title>
        <p>For building the tool, we needed three main components: an
output panel which displays the visual representation, a
visualization engine which transforms the data into the visual
representation and a database storing the data.</p>
        <p>
          We developed the tool as a web application to make it
accessible to anyone with a standard web browser (output panel).
As database system, we used MongoDB and as a visualization
engine the JavaScript libraries D3.js and dc.js, which together
can be used to create and render charts providing instant
feedback on user input [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref32">32</xref>
          ], [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref33">33</xref>
          ], [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref34">34</xref>
          ]. To layout the charts, we
used the frontend framework Bootstrap, as it is particularly
user-friendly and easy to implement [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref35">35</xref>
          ]. A repository on
GitHub was used for version control and documentation:
https://github.com/Sonnenstrahl/datavis [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref36">36</xref>
          ]. The dashboard
can be accessed at: https://files.ifi.uzh.ch/datavis
        </p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-4-2">
        <title>B. Performance and testing</title>
        <p>In a first step, we created the dashboard without the heat
map. The performance was exceptionally good and had no
input lag when displaying all observations for Europe. In a
second step, we added the heat map, which significantly lowered
performance, as it is multidimensional and requires two key
attributes (day of the week and activities). Therefore, we
created custom launch parameters which enable the user to launch
the application without the heat map or grouped activities (this
functionality is not available in the online version of the tool).
To inform the user that the system is busy while loading data, a
loading wheel was added.</p>
        <p>The prototype and the final dashboard were tested by two
researchers and used for environmental assessment of lifestyles
in a pilot use case (see section V). The researchers reported that
they successfully used the tool to compare time-use patterns. A
list of further potential improvements can be found on GitHub.
Additional tests would help to improve the tool, especially
because of the many degrees of freedom in visualization design.</p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-5">
      <title>V. EXEMPLARY APPLICATION OF THE TOOL TO ASSESS</title>
      <p>LIFESTYLES AND THEIR ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS</p>
      <p>We used the visualization tool for an initial analysis of
differences in 24-hour time-use patterns across regions, time
frames, socio-economic and demographic backgrounds. For
each time-use pattern we also estimated the total energy
consumption associated with the activities performed on the day
using average energy intensities of activity categories (see Tab.
I; energy intensities are based on an analysis of finish
households in 1998-2000 and need to be interpreted with care
because of their age). Tab. III shows the result of the analysis and
potential interpretations of differences in time-use patterns. The
table illustrates one example how the visualization tool can be
applied to investigate time-use data and environmental impacts.
Due to methodological differences in surveys across countries,
different numbers of observations for each time frame and
country, and high numbers of missing values for some
variables the results need to be interpreted with caution. They do not
imply causality and only have value as a starting point for more
detailed investigations. In the following we describe the main
results by variable to demonstrate the approach and the tool.</p>
      <sec id="sec-5-1">
        <title>A. Age, gender, number of children</title>
        <p>Younger people spend more time on pvw and wtc than older
people, who spend more time on lr and fd. In this analysis,
spending few time on pvw reduces environmental impacts as no
energy consumption is allocated to pvw (0 MJ/hr), however wtc
seems to be related to pvw and is energy intensive (73 MJ/hr).</p>
        <p>
          Women seem to cause high energy consumption by
spending more time on phf (30 MJ/hr) and less time on pvw than
men. However, this energy consumption should be allocated to
all members of a household, as the activity phf commonly
serves all of them, not just the person who performs the
activity. Gerushny et al. [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref37">37</xref>
          ] showed that time women spent on phf
continuously decreases since the 1960s, and increases for men.
        </p>
        <p>Unsurprisingly, people without children seem to spend
more time on lr and less on phf.</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-5-2">
        <title>B. Education, motorized vehicle computer/Internet access</title>
        <p>People with higher education, a motorized vehicle, or a
computer and/or Internet access tend to spend more time on pvw
and travel (pt + wtc)2, which increases their energy
consumption. One possible explanation is that individuals with these
characteristics have a higher-than-average income which is
related with time spent on pvw and wtc.</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-5-3">
        <title>C. Working hours and employment status</title>
        <p>Compared to the average, people who spend more time on
pvw and wtc (see variables employment status and working
hours in Tab. III) mainly sacrifice time spent on phf, followed
by lr. Sacrifice of time spent on sr, fd and pt for pvw and wtc is
lower.
2 We have to consider that diary years span from 1974-2010. Having a
computer and Internet access was not always common in this time frame.</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-5-4">
        <title>D. Urban/rural living environment</title>
        <p>It seems that living in an urban or rural environment has no
strong impact on time-use patterns. People in urban
environments spend slightly more time on travel. For assessing the
environmental consequences, differences in the modal split in
rural and urban environments need to be considered.</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-5-5">
        <title>E. Country and year</title>
        <p>In Southern European countries people spend more time on
sr than in Northern European countries. Compared to the 1970s
until 1990s it seems that in the 2000s people travel slightly
more (see also V.F).</p>
        <p>Comparing results across countries and time periods has to
be done with caution because the data from different years or
countries usually stems from different studies which might
differ in survey methodology. E.g., time spent on wtc in Italy
and, on pt and wtc in Austria, seems to be implausibly low.</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-5-6">
        <title>F. Energy consumption</title>
        <p>Highest (private) energy consumption is found for women,
people with children in the same household and part-time
employees. These effects occur as we are not considering energy
consumption at the workplace and thus people who work less
(0 MJ/hr), spend the time on more energy intensive activities
(e.g. phf, lr). It is an interesting question how to include energy
consumed during the time spent on pvw in such analyses.</p>
        <p>Traveling should be treated with special attention, because
it is highly energy-intensive. Time spent on traveling in the
2000s seems to be higher than in the 1970s, a phenomenon
which increases energy consumption (however, this also
depends on development of passenger miles, modal split and
transport energy intensity).</p>
        <p>
          This result potentially contradicts results of other studies
which find that time spent on travel did not change in the past
25 to 30 years (based on Hungarian time-use survey [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref38">38</xref>
          ]). This
aspect needs to be further investigated. Also, full-time
employees/people with high-working hours and people who have a
computer and/or Internet access travel more than others.
        </p>
        <p>Finally, it is unclear if spending more time on an activity
really increases the energy consumption for that activity. For
example, in Southern European countries people spend more
time on fd, but does this imply they eat more? In fact, if people
just eat slower and therefore spend less time on other energy
intensive activities, total energy consumption might decrease.</p>
        <p>VI. DISCUSSION</p>
        <p>The application of the visualization tool shows that it can be
used to compare lifestyles and associated environmental
impacts. The chosen visualization idioms display the data in a
meaningful way that is easy to interpret by an end user;
context-dependent guidance is directly provided. However, the set
of visualization idioms provided is not exhaustive and
receiving feedback from more users could yield valuable information
for further refinement and extensions.</p>
        <p>Directly enhancing the tool with environmental data (in this
case energy intensities or emission factors of activities) would
allow users to immediately compare the environmental impacts
of various lifestyles with the tool. However, this is also subject
to availability of such data, which so far is only available for
specific countries and time frames. A full list of potential
improvements can be found on GitHub.</p>
        <p>VII. CONCLUSION</p>
        <p>We created a tool to visually explore time-use data and
derive initial hypotheses regarding changes in lifestyles which
can have relevant environmental impacts.</p>
        <p>In our pilot application of the tool, we found initial
evidence that increased use of ICT does not necessarily reduce
energy consumption of individual lifestyle. From a time-use
perspective, any technological change which triggers changes
in time allocation can only be environmentally sustainable if
total environmental impacts of activities performed after the
change is lower than of the activities performed before.</p>
        <p>There is much potential to improve the tool, i.e. directly
including environmental data in the tool or improving the
performance. We encourage researchers interested in time-use data
to use this visualization and even add further functionality.</p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-6">
      <title>ACKNOWLEDGMENT</title>
      <p>We thank the Centre for Time Use Research of the
University of Oxford for collecting and standardizing time-use data
from various countries and providing the data free of charge.</p>
    </sec>
  </body>
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