Creating ‘Cool’ Mobile Technologies To Reduce Teen Energy Use Daniel Fitton Janet C Read Russell Beale Child-Computer Interaction Child-Computer Interaction Advanced Interaction Group Group (CHiCI), Group (CHiCI), University of Birmingham University of Central Lancashire, University of Central Lancashire, Birmingham Preston, PR1 2HE, UK Preston, PR1 2HE, UK B15 2TT, UK DBFitton@UClan.ac.uk JCRead@UCLan.ac.uk r.beale@cs.bham.ac.uk Ben Cowan Yukang Guo Advanced Interaction Group Department of Computer Science University of Birmingham Swansea University Birmingham Singleton Park B15 2TT, UK Swansea SA2 8PP, UK B.R.Cowan@cs.bham.ac.uk Y.Guo@swansea.ac.uk ABSTRACT ACM Classification Keywords In this paper we present an overview and initial work from H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): a research project creating ‘cool’ mobile technologies to Miscellaneous. educate and inform teenagers in order to reduce their energy use. Teenagers are already becoming consumers and INTRODUCTION will form the next generation of workers, homeowners, Governments across the world are now committed to managers and policy makers; a longitudinal change in their reducing CO2 emissions and one key area for improvement habits could have huge impact. However, it is notoriously is reduction in domestic and personal transportation energy difficult to engage with teenagers and effect changes in usage. In the home CO2 is released primarily in the their attitudes or actions. Teenagers are often most generation of electricity, the combustion of gas and oil for motivated by their peer group and what is currently ‘cool’ heating and combustion of fuel in transport. Within the past or ‘uncool’. The challenges of this work are not only the 20 years there has been a steady increase in the number of creation of persuasive mobile technologies to encourage appliances in the modern home coupled with growth in the teenagers to reduce their energy use, but to make these ownership of energy hungry devices such as tumble driers technologies sufficiently ‘cool’ that they are desirable and and plasma TVs and an increase in the use of devices with socially acceptable enough to support adoption and standby facilities [5]. Many of the electrical devices appropriation by teenagers. In addition to providing contributing to the rise in domestic energy are used and personalised and aggregate energy usage data and sometimes owned by teenagers. Research in the UK has educational information in a meaningful way, the mobile indicated that 95% of teenagers had a TV, music system or technologies we are designing will allow for appropriation phone in their rooms, with two thirds having all three [13]. in ‘cool’ ways thereby fostering an active community of A separate study reported that 400 surveyed teenagers aged teenagers where it is cool to minimise energy use. 13 to19 were collectively wasting enough energy to power 4,702 schools and a third of the energy being used was a Author Keywords direct consequence of ‘standby’ behaviour [1]. Energy Use, Teenagers, Mobile Technologies Our work on the ‘taking on the teenagers’ projects (www.mad4nrg.org) will engage young people (aged 12- 191) in reducing their own personal energy use and make Copyright © 2011 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted only for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and copyrighted by the editors of PINC2011. 1 It is problematic running studies with teenagers from age 14-15 in schools in the UK when they begin preparing for GCSE examinations, we therefore also target pre-teens to ensure we can work the same subjects for the 3 year duration of the project. positive changes in attitudes towards energy use that will define the attributes of cool and being ‘cool’ is often last through adulthood. This will be achieved through the extremely important. From studies of existing literature and creation of mobile technologies (called MAD: Make A initial design sessions we have identified three main levels Difference) to educate teens about choices they can make to of coolness in the context of teenager. The first, and easiest reduce energy use and provide feedback on energy usage. to achieve, is the coolness associated with having desirable Mobile technologies will also be used to gather energy things that others aspire to (such as latest technology or usage information through self-report and sensing clothes), the second is coolness associated with actions or technologies, for example detecting which transport activities that gain recognition from peers. The third, and methods are being used, in addition to more usual energy most challenging to achieve, is that of holistically ‘being’ monitoring in the home. These mobile technologies will cool and often results in being admired and often deferred make personalised and aggregated energy usage to by peers. It is this latter category that marketing information accessible in meaningful ways to enable companies often seek to influence as, by virtue, products comparison and competition between peers to foster an they associate with become cool and are then desirable by active community of teenagers interested in reducing others. energy use. The mobile devices will also make available Coolness is generally a challenging property to design into status updates about individual energy use and provide a product and within the three types of cool we have targeted educational material to users. identify the second (associated with actions or activities that The popularity of home energy monitors from gain recognition from peers) as most likely to be achievable manufacturers such as AlertMe (www.alertme.com) and within the project. This will be coupled, to a lesser extent, Current Cost (www.currentcost.com), and services such as with the first type (having desirable things). The mobile Google PowerMeter (www.google.com/powermeter) mean applications we are designing will enable teen users to that monitoring electricity use in the home is inexpensive monitor their energy usage (captured using low cost and uncomplicated. However, even where the energy monitoring technology in the home and mobile devices) and consumption information is provided, the visualization of devise their own ways of representing, sharing and this information often cannot easily correlated with comparing the information. Through our participatory consumption behaviour [9]. This is either because the units approach we will create applications that support of measurement are relatively meaningless to users or the customisation and expressivity such that they can be information is irrelevant to their interests (e.g. cost appropriated in a ‘cool’ ways by teenagers. One scenario information may not mean much for teenagers who do not we envisage is teenagers being able to compare energy pay the bills). Furthermore there is a common lack of usage using a metric and visualization they themselves have awareness about the amount of energy consumed by device devised and/or adopted (which is assumed to be cool in sin the home and energy-saving options [6]. their peer group) to determine who is the winner (using the least energy) and who is the loser (using the most energy). The key challenge of this work is not only design highly In this example it is likely that competition will encourage usable mobile technologies to provide access to energy consideration and reduction of energy use. Also, these usage information presented in a meaningful way for motivations will be nurtured and supported through use of teenagers, but also to ensure that these technologies that are the MAD technologies that will provide information and sufficiently ‘cool’ that they are desirable and socially advice on measures to reduce energy use, in addition to acceptable. Having created devices that are used and providing information on current energy usage. understood by the teens, we will then use a range of approaches to lead to long-term behavioural modification. CHANGING BEHVIOUR To achieve these goals a participatory approach is used This work will build upon the TTM model of behaviour which involves working directly with young people in change [11] and will link into more recent work on schools to carry out design and evaluation studies. emotional engagement for behaviour change ([2],[4]) which demonstrates that behaviour change is more effective, We now discuss the challenge of ‘cool’ and our initial engaging and productive if there is an emotional findings, the persuasive aspects of the technologies we are engagement between the technology and the user. Thus our creating, and the technological challenges we face. We give mobile technologies have to support appropriation in cool an overview of related work and finish with a discussion of ways but also have to be designed in a way that teenagers key issues and future work. can easily relate to them and in a manner that is receptive to THE CHALLENGE OF ‘COOL’ emotional interpretation (i.e. the systems themselves do not While the meaning of ‘cool’ has been considered, for necessarily have to be emotional, they just have to be able example [10] [12], there is not a single universally to appear emotional even if that effect is projected by the applicable definition. Cool may be anti-social or illicit, it user). may be expensive and highly desirable, or it may represent This project works from the assumption that teenagers have innovation (and these are not mutually exclusive the potential to make significant changes to energy usage. categories). In the case of teenagers, peer groups often Not only can changing teenage behaviour affect their long- term personal use, but they are also in a position where they (the number depending on the cost of the device), but after can use ‘pester power’ to affect the attitudes and behaviours initial trials we wish to open the system up to as wider of their parents, siblings and friends. As many teenagers participation as possible. have a greater amount of leisure time than adults, this can In order to enable energy monitoring in the home the result in the use of many high energy technologies such as project will use low cost COTS home energy sensing computers, games consoles and entertainment systems, technologies from manufacturers such as AlertMe and while their behaviours are not monitored by parents or Current Cost that can sense electrical energy use on a per- guardians in the way a younger child’s activities might be. home and per-appliance granularity, and make it available The project will aim to gather more information about over the Internet. Sensing kits will be provided for a teenagers’ patterns of energy use in order to understand number of user ‘champions’ and is hoped that they will help their behaviours and motivations more, and how they may encourage other teens to pester parents into buying the kit be influenced. so they can take part. The initial goal for behaviour change in this work in to A participatory design process to create MAD1 and MAD2 influence reduction in electrical and transport energy use. will be ongoing with several different groups in teenagers Initially, stories of energy usage will be collected from in schools across the UK involved. We expect to develop a teenagers in the schools with which we are working. The mixture of education, game-playing and competition, stories will be composed of text, images, video or audio and collaboration, peer pressure and self-awareness raising will give qualitative insights into teen energy use and approaches within and around these products to lead to attitudes towards energy use (some will be collected in reduction in personal energy use in the short term and long- school, others will be collected during focus groups). At a term behavioural change. In addition to MAD1 and MAD2, later stage in the project, after we have deployed the MAD1 a specially designed web portal will be used throughout the and MAD2 products, we will then collect energy stories project to allow participants in the project to share stories again to allow for qualitative comparison of change in about their energy usage, using narrative, images and video. behaviour. These will provide a rich source of qualitative data for the TEEN TECHNOLOGY project and also allow the identification of change in energy The project aims to create two key mobile products, one for usage habits as the project progresses. 13-16 year olds (MAD1) and another for 16-19 year olds RELATED WORK (MAD2). A key issue is selecting which mobile platform(s) A small number of wearable/mobile research prototypes to target and this is likely to be the trade-off in terms of and products have been developed for conveying energy features provided and device popularity. While smart usage information. UbiGreen [7] used mobile phones as phones such as Blackberry devices, iPhones, Android ambient displays to give user feedback on their devices, and Nokia Symbian handsets are increasingly transportation behaviours. It relied on the wearable sensing prevalent among adults in the UK, their high cost often unit, GSM cell signals and the participants’ manual input to makes them inaccessible to younger teenagers with little detect transportation mode. Eco-friendly transportation spending power and restricted to ‘pay as you go’ (contract behaviours, such as carpooling, taking bus and cycling etc. free) call plans. From our current studies in schools with were encouraged and shown as rewards on the ambient year 7s (age 10-11) and year 10s (age 13-14) it is apparent display. EnergyLife [3] is a pervasive sensing and feedback that the phones they own are basic devices often handed system. A server was connected wirelessly via a base down from an older sibling or parent. We have also found station to energy sensors which reported their energy usage that the children in our initial studies have little interest in every couple minutes. The real time energy consumption owning and using a mobile phone. Boys in particular information together with device consumption history, admitted that they failed to remember to charge their phone energy reservation tips etc. were delivered to a smart phone or ensure they had enough credit to make calls. Several year upon user's request using a Carousel interface. GridCarbon 10 boys claimed that they found their mobile phone useful is an iPhone app produced through the iDEaS Project as an alarm clock but little else. (www.ideasproject.info) which shows the current carbon Technologies adopted by older teenagers (17-19) with intensity, the quantity of CO2 produced for 1 kWh of slightly high spending power are often fashion led, but not electricity consumed, of the electricity currently being necessarily those which hit the mainstream or adult media. generated in the UK. The intention of the app is that it can For example, in a survey of all new undergraduate entrants be used as a tool to influence energy demand and reduce to a major UK University, Blackberry devices outnumbered CO2 emissions. AlertMe provide an iPhone app to allow both Nokia’s and iPhones, for example. This is partly due to remote access to data recorded by their home energy the cost of such devices but also the availability of specific monitoring product. The app allows current energy usage to communication channels – Blackberry Messenger being a be viewed remotely and provides a ‘personal swingometer’ popular one, but not (easily) accessible without a which is a simple graphical representation to help convey Blackberry handset. Within the project we have funds to energy usage in an easily understandable manner. While provide a small number of participants with mobile devices these examples highlight some innovative approaches to reducing energy use though mobile technologies none of [4] Creed, C. and Beale, R., Engaging Experiences with them align with the more holistic and long-term energy Emotional Virtual Therapists. in International Design reduction aims of this work. and Engagability Conference @ NordiCHI, Oslo, 2006. DISCUSSION [5] Department of Energy & Climate Change (2009) In creating energy saving devices for teenagers we consider Energy Consumption in the United Kingdom. Retrieved that ‘cool’ is a powerful factor in motivating adoption and from appropriation. To make energy saving attractive, we need http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/public to tap into the potential for peer pressure, personal goal ations/ecuk /ecuk.aspx (accessed January 2011). setting and achievement, and make good use of energy an [6] James Pierce, Diane J. Schiano, and Eric Paulos, integral part of the general discourse between teens. Our “Home, habits, and energy: examining domestic approach is not to attempt to produce cool products per se, interactions and energy consumption," in CHI'10: but to create technologies that can be personalised and Proceedings of the 28th international conference on appropriated in cool ways. Human factors in computing systems, New York, NY, The ethics of persuasion [8] in the context of this project USA, pp. 1985-1994, ACM, 2010. are somewhat mitigated in that the reduction of energy use [7] Jon Froehlich, Tawanna Dillahunt, Predrag Klasnja, is accepted to be a necessary move. However, this will be Jennifer Manko, Sunny Consolvo, Beverly Harrison, an area we explore in detail as the development of the and James A. Landay, “Ubigreen: investigating a mobile MAD1 and MAD2 prototypes progress. The project is tool for tracking and supporting green transportation currently engaged in design sessions with teenagers to habits," in Proceedings of the 27th international explore initial scenarios and requirements for MAD1 and conference on Human factors in computing systems, further understand the key characteristics of cool for New York, NY, USA, CHI '09, pp.1043-1052, ACM, different groups. 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