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 ascending and descending. The same would happen, for 1. Greenpeace (2018). Climate change. Available at: example, when ordering according to the name. https://es.greenpeace.org/es/trabajamos-en/cambio- climatico/ EVALUATION To verify the correct operation of the application, we 2. OMS (2018). Health and climate change. 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