In this paper we describe an investigation into a social, community-based electricity and waste visualisation. We present a system that, through visualisations suitable for all ages, can display the electricity consumption and waste production of a community. This system, originally deployed online, was analysed during a month-long user study, which found that, although eliciting an initial popular response, was not su ciently embedded in daily life to have a long term e ect. Thus a separate device was prototyped to give the system a permanent, more pervasive presence in a household. Additionally, we argue that such a system could be easily adapted for personalised mobile use, and would benet from the more frequent interactions with, for example, a user's mobile phone. We also present challenges in producing this interface on a mobile device, and open discussion on how this is best achieved.
H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: User-centred design|Input devices and strategies, Interaction Styles, Prototyping
Current scienti c reports and investigations into the causes
and extent of climate change, such as the IPCC Fourth
Assessment Report on Climate Change [
Many systems have been developed to help individuals track their own energy consumption or waste production, as discussed in the next section, but we are unlikely to reduce global energy consumption without working together. We sought to develop a system that a) was accessible to the whole household, and b) places our energy consumption in the context of other people in our communities. The aim is to help households work together, with each other and other households, to reduce global energy consumption. We believe that the implications of adding social awareness and a mobility to household metering has not been properly researched, and that it may have a signi cant in uence on the long term behaviour of users.
In the rest of this paper, we rst introduce a system designed to be both accessible to the whole family and socially aware. We then describe a study where this system was deployed within ve households for one month. Our ndings indicate that although an online social network provides good motivation for change, it is not su ciently built into daily routine to have a long term bene t. We then describe an initial investigation into a prototype device that places this socially aware system more pervasively into the living space and conclude with our hypothesis that a mobile deployment of this socially aware system will provide a more personalised experience to nudge and in uence energy consumption behaviours. 2.
In light of the recent interest in `green' living, table-top
style household electricity monitors have increased in
popularity as a method of gathering precise realtime domestic
electricity data conveniently, instead of the imprecise data
from a typically di cult to access household electricity
meter. Installing these monitors is arguably a proven way of
reducing a household's consumption- a study for the
Department of Environment Farming and Rural A airs by the
University of Oxford identi ed a saving of 5-15% on
average household consumption from the addition of a monitor,
as the occupants of the home became more aware of their
usage [
Future visualisations based on the data already available
from such commercial monitors could be used to create more
engaging and meaningful visualisations for households.
Current research is being done into the possibilities of using
local household data in new ways, to increase the visibility of
such data in everyday lives such as the Weigh Your Waste
[
Our goal was to design a system that was accessible to
the whole family, and so we used the participatory design
method [
A group of 10 and 11 year old children in a class at a local
primary school took part in a design session, creating ideas
to represent both electricity use and waste production. This
age group lies on the upper bounds of where children are
the most descriptive and self-re ective whilst still lacking
pre-conceived ideas and methods, often resulting in truly
original ideas [
These visualisations were then analysed for common features, and used as a basis for designing the nal visualisation used in the system. The children's designs had a number of popular themes in common, for example the use of colour such as tra c light style devices or lights that lit up in the same green, amber and red colours, which were popular for depicting electricity usage. Other themes included depictions of forests which changed in size, depictions of themselves or people close to them changing in size or getting older and younger, and pictures of rubbish bins that got progressively full of recycling or rubbish. These themes were combined to create the nal visualisation used in the system - a house depicts each di erent household, with rubbish and recycling use mapped to the amount of black bags and recycling bins, and the electricity use mapped to the number of trees and window colours, as can be seen in Figure 1.
The system we developed consisted of this visualisation
A qualitative user study was designed to investigate the impact that the Neighbourhood Wattch system had on a household's perceptions and behaviours regarding their electricity usage and waste production. Further the study recorded their actual usage throughout the month when using a system that visualised multiple households' electricity and waste data alongside the user's own. Finally the study explored the energy usage and waste production of households with young children in general.
The study took place over a period of four weeks. Each participating household was supplied with an electricity monitor, and a set of weighing scales to measuring the weight of rubbish they threw out. In the rst stage which lasted one week, participants' daily electricity use, as reported by the monitor, and the weight of their rubbish and recycling, were recorded onto a sheet of paper, to get them used to using the monitoring hardware. The second stage also ran for one week and involved recording the same data but using the website described previously, however participants could only see their own data. The third and nal stage made up the remaining two weeks, and used the same website as in the previous stage, but enabled the community visualisations.
Prospective households were contacted via the class that was involved in the visualisation participatory design exercise. Five households willing to partake in the study were found, each of which had at least one child in their nal years (9 and 10 years old) at school. Apart from this similarity other aspects of the households varied, such as the property sizes, attitudes towards the environment and `green issues'; three of the ve households recycled materials such as tin foil, TetraPaks and batteries, which were not collected from the kerb-side and therefore required a separate trip to the municipal site, whilst one reported recycling very little. These di erent households gave the study a wider scope to investigate the e ectiveness of visualisations on households with di ering attitudes and behaviours.
All participants experimented with the electricity
monitor when it was rst installed, exploring how much energy
di erent devices use in their homes (which con rmed
ndings by Darby et al. [
Despite the focus on the monitor, participants were still aware of their presence on the website, and how they appeared to other participants. Participants felt guilty when seeing the community page and identifying other people who were using less energy them them; one household, for example, commented: \I looked at other people's houses online, and saw averages of less than four and I thought ooh oh dear!". Another stated: \We trimmed all the hedges! We should have put that in see, that would have made us better!", rea rming their wish to look good to other people on the community section of the site.
Whilst the system was well received by all participants, a number of common and key issues arose through the study period. Whilst the website received praise from participants regarding its functionality and ease-of-use, when changing from the paper sheet recording to using the website, participants did not record as many readings. When queried, the participants admitted they did not use their computer on a daily basis and turning it on just to enter the reading was considered too time consuming: \Everyday I noted it down on the calendar usually what it was at the end of the night, but I didn't always have the energy to put it in - I don't always have the computer on everyday." Another household commented \It's quite a responsibility doing it every night", \Unless you're in the habit of going on the computer every night for something anyway".
In addition, the participants did not generally use or explore the website apart from updating readings, thus the main feedback from the electricity use came from the energy monitor itself, with most participants only looking through the community section of the site once or twice during the study.
Further to these results a re ned, more pervasive system
was prototyped, designed taking into account the issues that
participants had identi ed with the existing system, and to
address these problems it was decided that the re ned
system must consist of a device similar to the electricity
monitor, but be capable of displaying the same information as
the website. The table-top electricity monitor was attractive
to the households as it required nothing more than a casual
glance to assess how much electricity was currently being
used. By comparison the website required logging in, and in
some cases the additional time of turning the computer on.
It was decided the new system would also support automatic
updating of waste production, using a method similar to the
Weigh Your Waste project [
The re ned system was prototyped before being presented to the participants of the previous study for feedback in a think aloud session. The new system, shown in Figure 3 was designed to include a table-top display device that would show the community visualisation, whilst automatically recording the electricity and waste use from the household providing a more pervasive interaction than the previous system. 6.1
The new system was met with enthusiasm from most participants, with all but one household agreeing that it was better than the rst system. This participant liked the rened system, but commented that it wasn't a system they would use in their home, they thought they were as green as they could possibly be: \It's not for me, as we turn o electricity as much as possible anyway, and we also recycle as much as possible." They did however state that they would be willing to use such a system for research purposes, to help re ne it further.
All other households expressed an interest in the new device, and all said they would use it in their homes. They much preferred the fact that the device provided all the information on its own display and did not require using a computer, for both accessibility and speed reasons { two households stated they thought the new system was easier to use, with the large display being \Clear and easy to understand" and \More user friendly, and I don't need to log in - time e cient." They also commented that if it was in the home directly, \The children would like the interactivity of it", and all households stated they would prefer to place this device in the kitchen or dining room, in places they frequent in the home. 6.2
While it is clear that the socially aware aspect had a positive impact on people's energy consumption, the exact form of Neighbourhood Watt ch requires additional research. One logical hypothesis is that Neighbourhood Watt ch should be deployed on mobile devices, so that it can be integrated even more into daily practices. The revised prototype presented above had the bene t of being better integrated into routine, but several participants were unsure about the use of additional technology in the house to reduce energy consumption. There are several advantages to creating more personalised mobile device applications for Neighbourhood Watt ch: 1) many people keep mobile devices on their person throughout the day; 2) it allows the user to keep track of their consumption while out of the house; 3) it allows individuals to track ner-grained physical spaces such as their own room; 4) individuals can have a personalised ageappropriate view of their energy consumption; 5) it allows people to share and compare their energy consumption when visiting others. One downside is that it may be harder for families to engage with the visualisation together. Another is that the physical presence of the monitor in the house is taken away. We would suggest that the presence of Neighbourhood Watt ch on a mobile phone should be made permanent by an icon in the corner or an ambient indicator, to capture the same bene ts as a permanent installation in the house. These pros and cons should be discussed fully in a workshop environment, to identify if they are valid goals for the technology and gauge wether or not these are features users would want to interact with and use in a mobile context.
The transition from web-based interactions to mobile ones for this technology depends highly on the mobile technology being used. A recent smartphone released in the last couple of years is fully capable of displaying the web interface used in the study, and so are more recent popular form factors such as Apple's iPad. Re-designing the interface into one based in a native application for these devices would increase the speed of determining energy usage, however a di erent visualisation may be more suitable. Older phones such as one without touch screen or colour display would not support the web interface as is, and would require a redesigned interface speci cally for them which we believe would still not provide a compelling and engaging experience due to the hardware limitations of such devices.
Newer devices however present an increased range of possible interactions. GPS and location data available from these newer devices could be used to determine how households in the immediate vicinity of the user compare to their own use, or remind user when they have left their home which appliances have been left on for example. Additionally, the feedback from actuators such as a devices screen brightness, vibration levers or even auditory signals could be used to further nudge and persuade users. As mentioned above, having a mobile display of energy information when visiting friends could also be a conversation point for discussing how savings were made.
The rise of such social tools such as Twitter and Facebook combined with ubiquitous internet connected mobile devices has meant that for a lot of people, they are in constant communication with friends and colleagues. This social network popularity could be exploited with revisions of neighbourhood Watt ch into a social service. This would have scope from comparing individuals in a home and how they contribute to the overall energy use, how they compare individually and as a family to other individuals and households, how houses in a street compare in a town, or how towns compare throughout the country, possibly including such motivators as weekly goals, or challenges and leader boards. We believe tight integration with existing social networking services combined with mobile alerts, or noti cations of such challenges would highly increase it's e ectiveness. 7.
In this paper, we have described an investigation into a system that promotes and facilitates better awareness of energy consumption by placing it in the context of a user's community. Neighbourhood Watt ch lets users know not only whether they have reduced their energy consumption, but allows them to see whether or not their consumption is good or bad when compared to other people. While our investigation indicates that social awareness of energy consumption did motivate better energy consumption, the visualisations had to be pervasive and embedded in daily routines to have long term e ects. We believe that Neighbourhood Watt ch would be better able to nudge and in uence behaviour if deployed on users existing mobile-devices, but must maintain permanent presence to be e ective.