=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Neighbourhood Wattch - Community Based Energy Visualisation For The Home
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-690/paper2.pdf
|volume=Vol-690
}}
==Neighbourhood Wattch - Community Based Energy Visualisation For The Home==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-690/paper2.pdf
Neighbourhood Wattch - Community Based Energy
Visualisation For The Home
Chris Elsmore, Max L. Wilson, Matt Jones, Parisa Eslambolchilar
Future Interaction Technology Lab
Swansea University, SA2 8PP, UK
elsmorian@gmail.com, {m.l.wilson, matt.jones, p.eslambolchilar}@swansea.ac.uk
ABSTRACT Many systems have been developed to help individuals
In this paper we describe an investigation into a social, track their own energy consumption or waste production, as
community-based electricity and waste visualisation. We discussed in the next section, but we are unlikely to reduce
present a system that, through visualisations suitable for all global energy consumption without working together. We
ages, can display the electricity consumption and waste pro- sought to develop a system that a) was accessible to the
duction of a community. This system, originally deployed whole household, and b) places our energy consumption in
online, was analysed during a month-long user study, which the context of other people in our communities. The aim
found that, although eliciting an initial popular response, is to help households work together, with each other and
was not sufficiently embedded in daily life to have a long other households, to reduce global energy consumption. We
term effect. Thus a separate device was prototyped to give believe that the implications of adding social awareness and
the system a permanent, more pervasive presence in a house- a mobility to household metering has not been properly re-
hold. Additionally, we argue that such a system could be searched, and that it may have a significant influence on the
easily adapted for personalised mobile use, and would bene- long term behaviour of users.
fit from the more frequent interactions with, for example, a In the rest of this paper, we first introduce a system de-
user’s mobile phone. We also present challenges in produc- signed to be both accessible to the whole family and socially
ing this interface on a mobile device, and open discussion on aware. We then describe a study where this system was
how this is best achieved. deployed within five households for one month. Our find-
ings indicate that although an online social network pro-
vides good motivation for change, it is not sufficiently built
Categories and Subject Descriptors into daily routine to have a long term benefit. We then de-
H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: User-centred design—Input de- scribe an initial investigation into a prototype device that
vices and strategies, Interaction Styles, Prototyping places this socially aware system more pervasively into the
living space and conclude with our hypothesis that a mo-
General Terms bile deployment of this socially aware system will provide a
more personalised experience to nudge and influence energy
Design, Human Factors
consumption behaviours.
Keywords
Nudge, behaviour, influence, energy, consumption
2. BACKGROUND & RELATED WORK
In light of the recent interest in ‘green’ living, table-top
1. INTRODUCTION style household electricity monitors have increased in pop-
ularity as a method of gathering precise realtime domestic
Current scientific reports and investigations into the causes electricity data conveniently, instead of the imprecise data
and extent of climate change, such as the IPCC Fourth from a typically difficult to access household electricity me-
Assessment Report on Climate Change [8], together with ter. Installing these monitors is arguably a proven way of
other green issues such as peak oil, rainforest destruction reducing a household’s consumption- a study for the De-
and renewable energy (which received significant investment partment of Environment Farming and Rural Affairs by the
of over $150 billion in 2008 alone [7])have heightened public University of Oxford identified a saving of 5-15% on aver-
interest in environmental issues. This interest is spurred on age household consumption from the addition of a monitor,
by increased media coverage and campaigns such as 10:101 , as the occupants of the home became more aware of their
which aims to cut 10% of UK emissions in 2010, and the usage [3]. However, the current range of table-top moni-
Prince’s Rainforest Project2 , a campaign spearheaded by tors provide limited feedback to users, usually based on a
HRH The Prince of Wales against rainforest deforestation. numerical display which requires knowledge of the units of
1
More information available at http://www.1010uk.org/. power - Watts (W), and energy - Kilowatt Hours (kWh),
2
Available at http://www.rainforestsos.org/. which are used to represent electricity consumption. A no-
table exception to this is the Wattson device, which glows in
different colours depending on the amount of electricity be-
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
MobileHCI 2010 September 7-10, 2010, Lisboa, Portugal. ing consumed. In addition to this, despite supporting user
ACM 978-1-60558-835-3/10/09. experimentation in the home with relation to how differ-
ent devices affect overall household electricity consumption,
current monitors feature no further incentive to reduce con-
sumption, and after an initial interest, the energy savings
can decrease as the novelty factor of the monitor itself wears
off for the occupants of the home [2] in a boomerang effect.
Future visualisations based on the data already available
from such commercial monitors could be used to create more
engaging and meaningful visualisations for households. Cur-
rent research is being done into the possibilities of using lo-
cal household data in new ways, to increase the visibility of
such data in everyday lives such as the Weigh Your Waste
[6], and WattBot [9]projects. Weigh Your Waste involves an
in-home visualisation of the status of a user’s rubbish bin,
and uses the weight of the waste currently in the bin to cal-
culate the cost of disposal. The WattBot project aims to
create an iPhone application that shows a user’s home elec-
trical use, broken down by the room or appliance, to indicate
where the majority of energy is being consumed, and how
different rooms and appliances compare. We believe these Figure 1: Scale of visualisations through electricity
systems can be made increasingly effective by the addition and waste consumption and production.
of other households’ data, providing both a reference point,
and a possible goal to aim for. This social side of such a
system is ideal for mobile use where comparisons of energy
usage, recycling amounts and tips on how to improve could
be shared between individuals using mobile devices.
3. NEIGHBOURHOOD WATTCH
Our goal was to design a system that was accessible to
the whole family, and so we used the participatory design
method [1] to engage with a class of school children to design
a suitable visualisation. In this case it was used to form
initial ideas regarding the types of visualisation children felt
were suitable for showing waste and electricity data in the
home. As Druin and colleagues suggest [5], children can
offer valuable insight into how they themselves think, what
they like and dislike, and what they can relate to. Figure 2: The visualisation for the community.
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 implemented through a website as shown in Figure 2. The
age group lies on the upper bounds of where children are site took readings of waste and electricity data from each
the most descriptive and self-reflective whilst still lacking participant, and used this to generate the visualisation along
pre-conceived ideas and methods, often resulting in truly with other statistics, displaying this data when the partici-
original ideas [4]. The children were presented with two pant logged in.
examples of existing electricity monitors, and then asked to
produce one waste and one electricity design to represent
the same information through a visualisation. 4. USER STUDY
These visualisations were then analysed for common fea- A qualitative user study was designed to investigate the
tures, and used as a basis for designing the final visualisation impact that the Neighbourhood Wattch system had on a
used in the system. The children’s designs had a number of household’s perceptions and behaviours regarding their elec-
popular themes in common, for example the use of colour tricity usage and waste production. Further the study recorded
such as traffic light style devices or lights that lit up in the their actual usage throughout the month when using a sys-
same green, amber and red colours, which were popular for tem that visualised multiple households’ electricity and waste
depicting electricity usage. Other themes included depic- data alongside the user’s own. Finally the study explored
tions of forests which changed in size, depictions of them- the energy usage and waste production of households with
selves or people close to them changing in size or getting young children in general.
older and younger, and pictures of rubbish bins that got The study took place over a period of four weeks. Each
progressively full of recycling or rubbish. These themes were participating household was supplied with an electricity mon-
combined to create the final visualisation used in the system itor, and a set of weighing scales to measuring the weight
- a house depicts each different household, with rubbish and of rubbish they threw out. In the first stage which lasted
recycling use mapped to the amount of black bags and re- one week, participants’ daily electricity use, as reported by
cycling bins, and the electricity use mapped to the number the monitor, and the weight of their rubbish and recycling,
of trees and window colours, as can be seen in Figure 1. were recorded onto a sheet of paper, to get them used to
The system we developed consisted of this visualisation using the monitoring hardware. The second stage also ran
for one week and involved recording the same data but us-
ing the website described previously, however participants
could only see their own data. The third and final stage
made up the remaining two weeks, and used the same web-
site 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 exer-
cise. Five households willing to partake in the study were
found, each of which had at least one child in their final years
(9 and 10 years old) at school. Apart from this similarity
other aspects of the households varied, such as the prop-
erty sizes, attitudes towards the environment and ‘green is-
sues’; three of the five households recycled materials such as Figure 3: Revised system prototype with projector
tin foil, TetraPaks and batteries, which were not collected display, showing the community visualisation.
from the kerb-side and therefore required a separate trip to
the municipal site, whilst one reported recycling very little.
These different households gave the study a wider scope to 6. REVISED SYSTEM
investigate the effectiveness of visualisations on households Further to these results a refined, more pervasive system
with differing attitudes and behaviours. was prototyped, designed taking into account the issues that
participants had identified with the existing system, and to
address these problems it was decided that the refined sys-
5. RESULTS tem must consist of a device similar to the electricity mon-
All participants experimented with the electricity moni- itor, but be capable of displaying the same information as
tor when it was first installed, exploring how much energy the website. The table-top electricity monitor was attractive
different devices use in their homes (which confirmed find- to the households as it required nothing more than a casual
ings by Darby et al. [3]), and for a number of participants glance to assess how much electricity was currently being
the study served as a constant reminder to be more energy used. By comparison the website required logging in, and in
conscious. The community section of the website provoked some cases the additional time of turning the computer on.
interest among participants, but the electricity monitor was It was decided the new system would also support automatic
the primary cause for behaviour change in the households. updating of waste production, using a method similar to the
Despite the focus on the monitor, participants were still Weigh Your Waste project [6], involving wireless scales fit-
aware of their presence on the website, and how they ap- ted to rubbish bins to monitor the weight of the contained
peared to other participants. Participants felt guilty when waste.
seeing the community page and identifying other people who The refined system was prototyped before being presented
were using less energy them them; one household, for exam- to the participants of the previous study for feedback in
ple, commented: “I looked at other people’s houses online, a think aloud session. The new system, shown in Figure
and saw averages of less than four and I thought ooh oh 3 was designed to include a table-top display device that
dear!”. Another stated: “We trimmed all the hedges! We would show the community visualisation, whilst automati-
should have put that in see, that would have made us bet- cally recording the electricity and waste use from the house-
ter!”, reaffirming their wish to look good to other people on hold providing a more pervasive interaction than the previ-
the community section of the site. ous system.
Whilst the system was well received by all participants, a
number of common and key issues arose through the study 6.1 Reactions
period. Whilst the website received praise from participants The new system was met with enthusiasm from most par-
regarding its functionality and ease-of-use, when changing ticipants, with all but one household agreeing that it was
from the paper sheet recording to using the website, partic- better than the first system. This participant liked the re-
ipants did not record as many readings. When queried, the fined system, but commented that it wasn’t a system they
participants admitted they did not use their computer on a would use in their home, they thought they were as green as
daily basis and turning it on just to enter the reading was they could possibly be: “It’s not for me, as we turn off elec-
considered too time consuming: “Everyday I noted it down tricity as much as possible anyway, and we also recycle as
on the calendar usually what it was at the end of the night, much as possible.” They did however state that they would
but I didn’t always have the energy to put it in - I don’t al- be willing to use such a system for research purposes, to help
ways have the computer on everyday.” Another household refine it further.
commented “It’s quite a responsibility doing it every night”, All other households expressed an interest in the new de-
“Unless you’re in the habit of going on the computer every vice, and all said they would use it in their homes. They
night for something anyway”. much preferred the fact that the device provided all the in-
In addition, the participants did not generally use or ex- formation on its own display and did not require using a
plore the website apart from updating readings, thus the computer, for both accessibility and speed reasons – two
main feedback from the electricity use came from the energy households stated they thought the new system was easier
monitor itself, with most participants only looking through to use, with the large display being “Clear and easy to un-
the community section of the site once or twice during the derstand” and “More user friendly, and I don’t need to log in
study. - time efficient.” They also commented that if it was in the
home directly, “The children would like the interactivity of combined with ubiquitous internet connected mobile devices
it”, and all households stated they would prefer to place this has meant that for a lot of people, they are in constant com-
device in the kitchen or dining room, in places they frequent munication with friends and colleagues. This social network
in the home. popularity could be exploited with revisions of neighbour-
hood Wattch into a social service. This would have scope
6.2 Towards Mobile Device Design from comparing individuals in a home and how they con-
tribute to the overall energy use, how they compare individ-
While it is clear that the socially aware aspect had a posi-
ually and as a family to other individuals and households,
tive impact on people’s energy consumption, the exact form
how houses in a street compare in a town, or how towns com-
of Neighbourhood Wattch requires additional research. One
pare throughout the country, possibly including such moti-
logical hypothesis is that Neighbourhood Wattch should be
vators as weekly goals, or challenges and leader boards. We
deployed on mobile devices, so that it can be integrated even
believe tight integration with existing social networking ser-
more into daily practices. The revised prototype presented
vices combined with mobile alerts, or notifications of such
above had the benefit of being better integrated into rou-
challenges would highly increase it’s effectiveness.
tine, but several participants were unsure about the use of
additional technology in the house to reduce energy con-
sumption. There are several advantages to creating more 7. CONCLUSIONS
personalised mobile device applications for Neighbourhood In this paper, we have described an investigation into a
Wattch: 1) many people keep mobile devices on their per- system that promotes and facilitates better awareness of en-
son throughout the day; 2) it allows the user to keep track ergy consumption by placing it in the context of a user’s
of their consumption while out of the house; 3) it allows community. Neighbourhood Wattch lets users know not
individuals to track finer-grained physical spaces such as only whether they have reduced their energy consumption,
their own room; 4) individuals can have a personalised age- but allows them to see whether or not their consumption
appropriate view of their energy consumption; 5) it allows is good or bad when compared to other people. While our
people to share and compare their energy consumption when investigation indicates that social awareness of energy con-
visiting others. One downside is that it may be harder for sumption did motivate better energy consumption, the vi-
families to engage with the visualisation together. Another sualisations had to be pervasive and embedded in daily rou-
is that the physical presence of the monitor in the house is tines to have long term effects. We believe that Neighbour-
taken away. We would suggest that the presence of Neigh- hood Wattch would be better able to nudge and influence
bourhood Wattch on a mobile phone should be made per- behaviour if deployed on users existing mobile-devices, but
manent by an icon in the corner or an ambient indicator, must maintain permanent presence to be effective.
to capture the same benefits as a permanent installation in
the house. These pros and cons should be discussed fully in 8. REFERENCES
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