=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2497/paper6
|storemode=property
|title=Gamified App for Energy Saving and Sustainability
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2497/paper6.pdf
|volume=Vol-2497
|authors=Pablo Hernández-López,Carina Gonzalez-González
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/gamilearn/Hernandez-Lopez19
}}
==Gamified App for Energy Saving and Sustainability==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2497/paper6.pdf
Gamified App for Energy Saving and Sustainability
Pablo Hernández-López Carina S. González-González
University of La Laguna University of La Laguna
La Laguna, Spain La Laguna, Spain
alu0100888041@ull.edu.es cjgonza@ull.edu.es
ABSTRACT can be an excellent strategy to encourage the changing of
This article presents the development of a web application habits in the population. Thus, this work has the following
aimed at changing user habits or, at least, raising awareness goals:
in the field of energy saving and sustainability. It has been
gamified in order to increase motivation and encourage the Analyze some of the gamified applications
user to better assimilate certain knowledge and favor the existing today related with the energy saving and
change towards more positive behaviors. sustainability.
Design and development of a web application that
Author Keywords allows users to motivate themselves to change
App, gamification, sustainability, energy saving. their energy saving and sustainability habits.
ACM Classification Keywords This paper is organized as follows: first of all, the related
H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation. work will be presented, then, the design and developing of
INTRODUCTION the app will be described and finally, conclusions
Today, the world is facing serious problems with which, summarized the main contributions of this work.
from the field of information technology, we should try to
RELATED WORKS
help. One of them, and almost the most important one, is Gamification has been applied in different areas, since it
climate change and the degradation of the environment. has been seen how its use can improve the learning results
The action of the human being is devastating for nature, but and make people more involved in the subject. In [4], the
it has been so for more than a century. During the last 130 authors talk about how the application of gamification
years, the average temperature of the planet has increased affected a socio-educational project that had 161 students,
almost 1ºC, and it is expected that, by the end of this who, divided into several random groups, had to draw up an
century, this increase could reach 4,8ºC [1]. But the intervention plan to promote sustainable development
problems are not only with respect to the temperature, sea within a rural context. In order to immerse them in a playful
level has risen 20 cm during the last century and, according learning experience, they used different elements of
to the WHO, the number of deaths associated with climate gamification, such as the use of missions or achievements,
change by 2050 will exceed 5 million [2]. as well as classifications for the different groups.
There is no doubt that the cause of this problem is us and After the completion of this project, more than 70% of the
our fateful consumption habits. Therefore, the solution to participants showed great satisfaction with the type of
try to reverse the current situation is to change our energy activity proposed, as well as with the gamification of the
habits. But far from being progressing in this line, it seems process. It should also be noted that the activity was not
that every time we move further away from achieving a only motivated and involved more students, but also
sustainable way of life. The last example we have with the contributed to the acquisition and development of several
withdrawal of EE. UU of the Paris agreement against key generic competences.
climate change. On the other hand, another research [5] deals with the issue
It seems that, at least to this day, if we want to move of applying gamification to the educational process to favor
towards a greener lifestyle and save our planet, we must learning within the field of e-learning. By using game
start by changing our own way of life, since apparently mechanics, students are helped to gain motivation for the
large institutions do not give it much importance. Small study and, thanks to the good feedback received, they feel
changes in our day to day can contribute to stop the current more motivated to study and read. Besides, the gamification
situation and prevent future generations from suffering favors the generation of positive changes in user behavior.
catastrophic consequences. In this sense, gamification [3] Gamifying does not imply creating a game, but making
education more fun and attractive, therefore, making use of
this method is a great idea when creating e-learning
Copyright © 2019 this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative
Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). applications that are more effective.
In: J. Arnedo-Moreno, C.S. González, A. Mora (eds.): Proceedings of the
3rd International Symposium on Gamification and Games for Learning
But the gamification is applicable in other fields besides the
(GamiLearn'19), Barcelona, Spain, 22-10-2019, published at http://ceur- educative one, in [6] it is spoken of its use applied to the
ws.org
marketing of services, scope for which the gamification responsible use of energy and reduce their CO2
could be very useful in the future. An interesting line for emissions using the bicycle or public transport.
future research could be, for example, the use of customer The application has a version for both individual
loyalty cards and other marketing techniques such as users and companies, so that companies can offer
gamified services. Finally, in [7] there is talk of applying their employees a sustainable app. The application
gamification for the detection of noise pollution in cities. uses a rewards model in which the user is given a
Recoin for each kilogram that has stopped emitting
Having data from different urban areas is crucial to know
to the atmosphere or for each kilometer traveled on
the evolution of these and know what their trends in the
foot or by bicycle. In this way, users can win
environmental field. Collecting observations related to
prizes, badges and climb positions in a world
environmental areas, such as noise, involves the
ranking, feeling more motivated to continue doing
deployment of sensor networks that can be quite expensive
these practices. In addition, the Recoins can be
for local and regional governments, however, today, the
exchanged for different prizes, such as a meal in
smartphones that we all use are full of sensors to which you
the company cafeteria, a training session or for
can take advantage of them to, for example, make noise
different accessories for a bicycle. It is also
measurements through their microphones. Therefore, the
possible to make individual raffles within the
development of an application with gamification techniques
company. Another attraction offered by this
to collect data from acoustic pollution and, the fact of
application is that each user has the possibility of
gamify this application, favors that the development of
planting a tree, since for every 100 kilometers
tasks that can turn out to be boring and repetitive becomes
traveled on foot or by bike, a tree that will be
something more bearable and that compromises more to the
planted in an ecological reforestation forest in
users. In this way, a large amount of information can be
Germany is unlocked. In addition, you can also
sent to governments with the aim of detecting the areas with
organize a donation project to any desired NGO,
the greatest problems and improving the quality of life in
such as doctors without borders.
those areas.
• TRIBE 2020 [10]: This application was born from
In order to analyze the current state of the gamification, a a European project whose objective was to save
search of different applications has also been carried out, energy in public buildings, and incorporates
which are described below: gamification with the aim of promoting habit
changes in the user and make it more efficient.
• Virtual Energy Advisor [8]: It is an application
This application shows us a simulation of a
created by the Catalan company Enerbyte, which
building, and what is sought is that the user
is committed to improving energy efficiency. It is
minimizes as much as possible the energy
developed with the support of the city council of consumption of it. The main objective of TRIBE
Barcelona, and is available to any neighbor of the (Training Behavior Towards Energy Efficiency) is
city that wishes to make use of it, for which they
to achieve energy savings in public buildings by
have to register in the web of the city council. This
influencing the behavior of users and using ICT
application not only offers the user data about their solutions. This project is developing a pack of
energy consumption, but also helps the user to use
solutions so that administrations can apply it in
that information to save on the invoice at the end their buildings. This pack consists of five phases:
of the month. Some of the features it offers are that conducting an energy audit and initial diagnosis,
it allows the user to know which is the cheapest
developing a virtual building pilot, developing a
time to use the appliances (washing machine,
specific monitoring plan for the building,
dishwasher ...), or if the power that is currently
developing a financing scheme and carrying out an
contracted is the most convenient for your home. It awareness campaign that addresses the energetic
has been proven that a change in behavior is linked behavior. In addition to this, as has been
to an energy saving of approximately 10%, and mentioned, gamification is also used as a vital tool
that is what this platform pursues, that the user
to promote the change of behavior in users. With
knows how much they consume and motivate
this objective, a videogame has been developed
them to maintain good habits over time. Therefore,
that includes: development of groups of profiles of
it offers elements of games that allow the user to user behavior, identification of 250 energy
compete with himself and with the rest of the efficiency measures, development of a replicable
community, thus encouraging a competitive spirit
methodology when designing and implementing
to see who saves more.
an ICT monitoring and development system of a
• Changers CO2 Fit [9]: This application fights
simulation engine.
against change climate promoting a more
sustainable way of life and trying to change the
habits of its users, which are encouraged to make
ECOLIFE: GAMIFIED APP Users can see their tasks and habits. In each of them there is
EcoLife [11] is a web application (web-app) whose a series of predetermined activities that the user cannot
objective is to change the habits of users or, at least, raise modify, but he is given the option of adding any type of
awareness in the field of energy saving and sustainability. It action that he considers appropriate. All those tasks or
includes some elements of gamification that seek to habits that have been added by the user may be deleted later
motivate the user and encourage the latter to better absorb if desired. Both columns have the same purpose, to
certain knowledge and change their behavior towards more encourage the user to perform these actions and to mark
positive ones. them as done, the main difference is that the tasks, as the
name suggests, can only be done once a day.
Regardless of whether the action performed is a task or a
habit, the user will accumulate experience as they mark
them as completed, even if they are added later. That yes,
will add something less than the rest. On this same page, in
case the user has not done anything that day, a notification
will appear as a reminder to encourage him to interact and
continue progressing. Also, the user can check all those
achievements that have been unlocked over time and the
performance of different activities. In the beginning, all the
achievements will be blocked, because this will not take too
much time using the application or you will not have
interacted enough, but as you complete different tasks and
habits you will unlock different badges that they recognize
the dedication that has been placed. In the following figure
3, it shows how a user has managed to unlock an
achievement corresponding to the habit of recycling:
Figure 1. Main page of Ecolife web-app [10]
To be able to use the application, users must log in or, if
they do not have it, register in advance (Figure 1). Once the
registration is made, the user will be redirected to the initial
page so that he can log in. In the following Figure 2 you can
see the page that the user sees after having logged in. In the
upper part there is a navigation bar that allows access to the
different sections (Points, Achievements and Ranking) and
close the session. Below this bar, there is another one in
which the data related to the user is displayed, such as the
avatar, the user name, the current level or a progress bar Figure 3. Sample of blocked and unblocked achievements.
with the experience obtained to date. In the case of the
image, the user can change it whenever he wants by simply
clicking on it and selecting a different one. In order to notify the user, and that he knows when he has
managed to unlock a certain milestone, he will be notified
at the time the user has achieved it, so that he can go to the
corresponding section to see it. In addition, if the user
wanted, has a series of buttons at the bottom of this page to
share by social networks that has obtained an achievement
in the application. In addition, the user can access to see a
classification of all those who use the application, so that
they feel motivated to continue with the execution of the
different tasks to overcome the rest of users.
By default, it will be shown first to that person who has a
greater amount of experience achieved, but, if one wishes,
you can select according to what value you want the table
Figure 2. User interface with habits and tasks. to be displayed. If you click, for example, on Level, the
ranking will be ordered according to user levels, both REFERENCES
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EVALUATION
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https://trabajotfg.herokuapp.com/
In this paper we have presented the first functional
prototype of EcoLife, an application that was born with the
aim of helping people to become aware of this issue and,
consequently, change their habits for others more respectful
with nature, creating habits that help combat the problems
of pollution and energy waste. As further work, we plan to
continue the developing of the web-app, including new
functionalities, improving the graphic design of the
interface and testing with user the web-app in their real life.