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research

Interviews
As a first step in Cycle 2, it was necessary to take a look at the interpersonal relations and interactions related to electricity use. What feelings existed between family members when it comes to their sustainable behaviours? Was everyone on the same track? Did certain roles emerge? To figure this out, I held interviews with two separate parents. The findings from these interviews are as follows: Children seem to lack a sense of responsibility Parents feel futility/desperation trying to get kids to behave well Parents believe children waste the most energy Parents feel like their children give them extra work - irritation Every member of the family seems to have different sustainable priorities Difference between partner or child making mistake Children are forgiven, partners would not be. Parent feels like sustainability was not a big enough part of raising Sustainable behavior is a lifestyle The coach figure would like to see everyone motivated Correcting peers is different from correcting juniors Parents use explanation and talking to edu cate kids about sustainable behaviour and it doesnt always seem to be working. Parents sometimes use reinforcement to stimulate proper behaviour, but find it hard to do so for sustainability. To the aware people, waste evokes negative reactions. Correcting peers is different from correcting juniors People have different reasons for being sustainably aware. Parents dislike tricking/forcing their kids into good behavior, prefer the adult treatment.

I highlighted the findings that I thought were most relevant or inspiring. The conclusion from earlier research (contextmapping) - that people wanted a coach figure to help them be sustainable - seems to be supported by this second interview. What we learned from this interivew was that this coach figure is currently being played by one of the parents, and that they dont feel comfortable or effective in that role. They either dont want to be that parent that constantly nags everyone about everything, or they dont have the information or tools to effectively coach. They want the coaching to be a natural, positive thing, not something that makes the coach into a boogieman. 1

Scenarios
The next step was to investigate the different situations that might arise in daily life, related to electricity use. To focus this research a bit more, I focused it on lights only. For this, I observed my daily routines for a couple of days and noted down whenever I interacted with the lights (or didnt) and how/why. That resulted in the storyboards on the following page. One thing that I was interested in in this experiment was whether or not people were aware of the lights being on, and if so, why? Did other people being present play into that? If there were multiple people, who was responsible and what social interactions arose?

ance of constantly writing down your name seemed to be too much, and the fact that it was non-intrusive and optional (there were no consequences attached) made it so that it was too easy to ignore. This taught me a valuable lesson about my interaction vision - there should probably be a consequence attached and non-intrusive might not be the most effective way to motivate people.

Light-log
To test my interaction vision and some ideas about motivation, annoyance and hassle, I conducted an experiment in my own house. I hung a light log in the kitchen: an A3 where people had to note their initial and the current time whenever they switched the lights on or off. After a week, I interviewed people about this experiment to see what kind of effect it had on them. The results of this were pretty interesting. At first, people seemed to be more aware of the lights, because they saw this list hanging every time they wanted to leave the kitchen. However, this good behaviour soon disappeared, and people later admitted to not switching on the lights at all if they were only in the kitchen for a short while - the annoy2

Concept direction
In parallel to the interaction research, I started developing my concept direction from Cycle 1: Make energy into a limited resource A really important step in this exploration was the idea to have people physically interact with the electricity. What makes someone know exactly how much pringles are left in a can just by feeling its weight, but not know how much energy is left in a battery? How come I always let my phone battery run out even though there is a visual indicator on the screen?

Battery?
The idea that slowly developed can be summarized as follows: What is your house was battery operated? What if your power could run out, and you knew how much was left? The initial execution of this idea consisted of everyone in the house carrying around their own personal battery. For mockup testing, this was visualized as a bottle of water - one of the things that people had an intuitive understanding of. This, combined with a sort of overview station where users could recharge their batteries and see how many times theyve done that already, would satisfy the information/overview desire that users expressed in the context mapping session, as well as allowing the coach-figure from the interviews to motivate people without being a bully - there was now a machine being the bully for them. At this point the results from the light-log test inspired me to connect a consequence to the battery running out: power would cut when it was empty. I set out to start testing this interactive concept.

More research
Personal Battery test
During one of the many work afternoons for EI, I gave two friends a cup of water next to their laptop. I set a timer (that they could not hear) every 5 minutes, and poured some water from their cups. For one of those friends, when their cup was empty, Id slam his laptop shut and wouldnt allow him to continue working until his cup was full again. He had to walk to the nearby sink and refill it. For the other friend, I merely told him that his cup was empty and didnt do anything to his laptop. Intial results: the first friend started paying attention to how full his cup was after two cycles. Hed even refill it before it was empty. The other friend did nothing at all - he simply ignored my messages and the cup. The first friend, however, admitted that hed never install a system like this in his house, since it would negatively impact his life. This was echoed by the results of the contextmapping. Second test: I started letting the alarm go off audibly when his cup was empty and only shut it off after he refilled the cup. I did nothing to his laptop still. This time he reacted more - the alarm going off had a certain urgency, and he said it felt bad not to do something about it. This further supported my idea that Non-intrusive in my interaction vision was the wrong idea. There had to be a consequence, just not a functional one (disabling power).

much water is in this bottle without lifting it or looking inside. (Me pouring water from an opaque bottle) Tell me to stop when its 50% empty. Same assignment, but now I was hiding the stream of water coming out. The most important findings from this research: Users rely on tactile sense heavily in judging the contents of a container. There was almost no difference in accuracy of their guesses between transparent and opaque bottles. Users think multiple smaller bottles >> single big bottle. They are not good at translating contents from one volume to another. Also, because they cant compare the weights anymore. If users have to work to get something, they value it more highly. Everyone in my robber question gave away the bottle that they did 2 pushups for. Perhaps even more than weight, users rely on sense of balance, weight distribution and reactions to motion or force to gauge how full a container is. These senses combined were equally accurate as weight+vision. Interactions included things like tipping the bottle to see when it would fall, rolling it, shaking it, letting it dangle (pendulum) and swishing the contents. What this suggests is that letting users physically feel the energy is one huge factor in making their energy use intuitive to them.

Tactility
I felt I needed more insight into the reason people were so good at judging the contents, fullness of things with mass. How come one can intuitively tell how full a bottle of water is, even without looking at it? What senses do we use? How do we distinguish the weight of the bottle itself from the weight of the contents? To fulfill my desire to let users interact with electricity, I felt that these insights were crucial in coming up with a tangible concept. To find an answer to these questions, I gathered all sorts of bottles - big, small, heavy, light, transparent, opaque, wide, thin, big or small opening, etc.. I then asked participants to answer questions such as: (When presented with two bottles, one transparent and one opaque) Pour both of these down to about 30% full. (Same two bottles, both equally full) Which one would you say is the fullest? (Three small transparent bottles, one big transparent bottle with exact same amount of water in it) Which is more water? (Give them one bottle after 20 pushups, give them another identical bottle after 2 pushups). Im robbing you. Give me one of your bottles. (Opaque bottle, about 3/4 full) Tell me how

Interaction Vision
As described earlier, I have had to make some changes to my interaction vision. One of the qualities I envisioned was that the interaction should be unintrusive - that it should present you with information when you looked for it, it didnt force itself upon you. However, I have since come to realize that two very distinct and separate interactions are necessary to make this idea work. During normal use - that is, before the user does something wrong. After the user commits bad behaviour. If the interaction is still unintrusive at the second point, he/she will not respond, can and will ignore the product. This was proven by my laptop+glass of water testing. As such, I want to define the second interaction as such: Respectful Honest Strict Obvious Like a hungry pet begging its late meal. The first interaction should have added to it: Tactile, physical Pleasing

Concept development
Based on all the findings so far and some criticisms on the personal battery idea, an initial concept came up. It is visible in schematic form in (image 1). The central Hub (A) would be where users could charge their batteries (B) and where their balance was shown - this system integrated a budgetting feature that would allow parents to keep a tight control over how much energy was available to everyone in the house, and to penalize overdrawing your account balance. This is similar to how a bank account works: You withdraw money that you then carry in your wallet. If your wallet is empty you need to withdraw more. If your bank account is empty, you need to borrow from others or live very conservatively. Especially that last wallet of money is going to be very precious. Participants of the contextmapping session mentioned such a functionality. My thought would be that this budgetting feature would also lead to interesting social interactions, in the form of borrowing each others energy. The wall sockets (C) would be where youd plug in or register your battery to power those appliances. Energy usage would drain your battery. (Note: it would be a metaphor - the batteries would not actually power anything. They would be a representation of your energy wallet.

Evolution
One factor that was always very unclear to me (and test participants) was where the indication of energy use would actually be located. Would it be on the battery? On the hub? On the outlets? What happens when you are active in two rooms at the same time? Does everyone need multiple batteries? Is there a separate battery, connected to the wall socket, for each person in each room? Does it control the entire room or just that one socket/light? This lead to a concept where I distinguished between two types of indication: Rate of energy consumption. Amount of battery charge left. The former would be located on the battery itself, while the latter would be visible only on the hub.

Identifiers
The Batteries, in this concept, would function as nothing more than links to the hub , Identifiers a way for a user to let the system know that they are responsible for that particular energy consumption. At first I wanted to integrate the weight or mass tactile component of the system in these watches, but that turned out to be a great technical challenge. Also, the idea of having to check in for each appliance that you use would be too much of a hassle (see: light-log), and feel too much like living in a prison. While the system worked around many of the flaws with the previous concept, it was a huge investment and I soon changed my mind. 7

Letting social dynamics do the work for you


The crucial insight that came from testing and brainstorming implementations of the system described before, was that many of the problems highlighted were not actually problems - they were simply things that led to interactions. Instead of trying to solve how 3 people could be active in the same room without using energy that belonged to someone else, what if we just let them do that, and relied on people to solve this among themselves? Just like you dont want to be the slowest in the group, or be the one that eats a disproportionate amount of the cookies, you would not want to be the one whose behaviour negatively affects others, or depletes a certain supply of something. As long as the system provided feedback about the current total rate of consumption, and the total amount of energy left before a recharge, the coachfigure had the tools necessary to keep others on track without being a bully.

System concept
The implementation that this lead to was drastically different - it does away with the Identifiers entirely and creates multiple, smaller and simpler hubs. These hubs dont distinguish between different users, but instead measure and display everything in one particular room. A. Single person Becomes aware - Limited supply makes user think about what his energy consumption. This TV sure does hog power! What do I really need? B. Two people with unequal consumption rates In addition to (A), also become aware of each others consumption pattern. Can you go recharge it? Youre using a lot more power than I am... Can you see how big a difference it makes if I switch these off? We dont even really need it! Again?! Do you really need that thing on all the time? C. Parent and child Objective information and immediate feedback allow parent to tutor child about energy use. See how its going faster now? This thing uses a lot of electricity! If you go away and leave all of this stuff on, it will go empty and then X will happen! A

By displaying the current energy usage, as well as the charge left for that room, they stimulate users to be aware of how much theyre using, whether they really need it on, and who else is present and what they are doing.

Interactions
I have tried to detail some of the envisioned interactions that would arise from using this concept. My plan is to test if these actually happen in cycle 3. C 9

Physicalizing
The question now, is how to give form to this hub? As seen on the previous page, there a lot of ways to visualize or physicalize the concept of energy. As was apparent from the tests with bottles, people have a very good intuitive understanding of mass, fluid or solid, and these quantities speak to them a lot more than units like kiloWatts, temperature or decibels. At first I had two metaphors for visualizing/physicalizing the amount of energy left.

Charge. Display quantity or rate of consumption in terms of an electric appliance being under electric charge, voltage or overheating. My mind immediately raced towards all of the old-fashioned electronics I used as a kid - miniature racing tracks, vacuum-tube amplifiers, transformers, etc. Glow, sparks, 50hz humm, heat, visible components, flickering. Draining contents. Visualize energy being used as physical contents of a container being emptied. A bottle pouring out water, sand in a sand timer running to the bottom, a balloon deflating. Force, weight, balance, flow, inertia. Especially self-contained systems (i.e. contents wouldnt actually need to flow out of the container) were preferred, due to flexibilty.

The latter has more to do with energy, but has more risk of becoming kitsch. I have, however, found a way to incorporate both into one object, lending both the physical sense of 1 with the electric theme of 2. 10

Concept 1
This abstract object will form the link between the user and their energy consumption, both giving them insight into their use patterns and stimulating good behaviour. In this version of the concept, the hourglass is actually filled with water which flows from the top to the bottom as the user(s) consumes electricity in that room. It gets this information from the wall sockets (which we assume to have wattmeters, as they do in all houses outfitted with smart meter systems). However, both sides of the hourglass are opaque, so the user cannot see the current water levels. In fact, the user can not see the water at all - we merely borrow some of the physical properties of water (fluidity, mass, viscosity) and give them to electricity. The only view into the hourglass is in the center part: a small window outfitted with LED lights. This does not show the current charge level, but only the flow (current consumption rate). (More on this later) would interact with a bottle of water, or a can of pringles - feel how much is left. Shake it. Tilt it. Roll it. Throw it. Swish the contents. See where the balance lies. At the same time, the little view into the object provides the user with an unintrusive display of their current consumption, even when they are not actively interacting with it.

As it runs empty (all water in the bottom half), the user will be alerted to come and recharge it (turn it around + some other action?). If they dont and keep using electricity, it will start overheating. What this means in practice is explained on the next page. In this way, electricity is turned into a limited resource, without negatively affecting or even preventing daily life. There is a consequence, but it is not a functional one.

What does this mean?


It means that the user will have a physical object in each room (some rooms?) that represents the energy being used in that room. They can interact with this object in much the same way that they 11

Human-product interaction
Of course, this could just be an odd thermos can with lights on it. How do we make it as convincing as possible that this object actually contains electricity? I mentioned a bunch of associations with charge before. Sounds, lights, etc. I want to apply these to the little window or electricity view, through application of an accelerometer. Active If the object is fully charged, make lightsaberlike buzzing sounds when the user moves or rotates it. Make it feel like you are trying to move an energetic object with a will of its own. If, instead, the object is almost empty, give off a weak low hum or high-pitched squeaks when you move it. Think electric toy with dead batteries. Flicker the lights a bit, as if moving it too much might break it or turn it off. Passive When stationary, give off little pulses of light that represent the flow of electricity. The faster, the more electricity. Similar to a heartbeat. If going empty, periodically spark (flash of light + crackling sound, imagine a shorted TL light or blown fuse). If really empty, and the users keep drawing more power, overheat - start sparking continuously, produce 50hz humm (overloading a transformer, electromagnet sounds), start flickering furiously, etc... In short, be annoying and act like a broken electrical appliance.

How does this combine?


The combination of not being able to see what is in the container, and producing all kinds of charge- or electricity related effects when the user interacts with it, will give off a strong impression that the container actually contains electricity itself. This is what I want to achieve: If this is empty, the electricity is gone. I need to recharge now!

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Problem areas / opportunities


I will have to test if and how people respond to the consequence (annoyance). They are free to ignore it, but it is still there - similar to how I let an alarm go off during my laptop + cups of water experiment. In any case, I have already determined that the object should never switch off electric supply - it should instead introduce a negative value when people are using more energy than they have, not prevent it from happening altogether. Secondly, I need to design a good interaction for recharging it. From my experiments it has become obvious that people value something more if they had to work for it - and simply turning over an hourglass is not a lot of work. Further, that motion doesnt really feel like re-energizing something. You are barely using any energy to do it, so how could that object gain energy from it? Something more violent or active is more appropriate. Third - technical feasibility. While I can think of a couple of ways to integrate two valves that control water flow through the hourglass, I have to be careful to not design a huge hydraulic system that will make the product prohibitively expensive and complicated. Especially the recharging interaction is difficult to design if you are dealing with physical water running through the object.

While using one I found that one can really feel the energy present in the object. I am currently thinking about replacing the water system inside the hourglass with a gyro system similar to a PowerBall. As the object is charged, it would be spun up when the user interacts with it and to the user this would feel like the object was truly energetic, charged, and had a mind of its own. It would resist motion and tilting. Since this would also do away with the complicated water system, it would allow for more formgiving freedom and ergonomic shapes - the current design is meant to be handled, touched and interacted with but does not really look like it. I think the combination of the light and sound effects through the electricity window + the physical forces introduced by the gyroscope make for a very interesting direction, perhaps more promising than the water-based one.

Forces
Most people are familiar with PowerBalls - toys/ tools used to exercise the wrists and combat RSI. They work by spinning up a gyroscope, which will then resist motion and rotation. 14

Concept 2
The concept described before can be very easily adapted to use by children. Instead of having these things all over the house, you would put one in a childs room and it would control and monitor that rooms energy consumption. The three main things that would have to be changed: It should be stylized and the metaphor should be something that is understood by young children, such as hungry animals or a tree with falling leaves. It should have a functional consequence - kids of these ages typically wont have career-critical documents on their xboxes, and the system is a lot more effective if they are forced to use it. It should only be possible to recharge the object with help from the parents. This will elicit a parent-child dialogue on their energy use and it will be a natural thing that the parent cannot be blamed for: if this is empty, there is no more power. Simple. Call me if you need more. This is a system that children learn to understand very quickly - it is the same as with candy or toys or anything else limited. The frog pictured above would eat the apples from the tree and glow when it had energy. If the apples are gone, so is the power to that room. The pig, on the other hand, requires the child to use some of their allowance (probably raised beforehand) to power their room - anything they have left

at the end of the week is theirs to keep. This will hopefully entice kids to think about whether they want to have 5 euros at the end of the week, or keep their computer running while they are not using it. In short - connecting value to electricity. Since the interviews and context mapping both indicated that being sustainable is really a lifestyle or attitude, and that it is learned from childhood, this might be a promising alternative to concept 1. However, I have done zero research towards kids so far, so it might be too late in the project to make such a drastic switch. For now I am sticking with concept 1. 15

The next step


Assuming I stick with my choice of Concept 1, the first step is figuring out whether I want to use the gyroscope-based system or the water-based system. I am currently leaning mostly towards the gyroscopes, both because of the together-ness of the interaction with the object, and because of technical implementation and design freedom. Following right after that comes formgiving - the hourglass shape is not necessary if I ditch the water system, and I can design something that truly represents an electricity container and invites people to handle it and use their tactile senses on it. This doesnt only mean the object itself, but also its context. Is it freestanding? Does it have a dock? (It currently does!). Is this dock standing, hanging, floating? With that out of the way comes the most important part of Cycle 3 - prototyping. Considering that my system uses a lot of assumed hardware that I will not have access to (wattmeter-equipped wall sockets, an entire house, etc..) I will have to mock up some of these other systems and their influence on the object/user. It will also be quite a technological undertaking, so gathering some info on the best way to accomplish my goals is a necessary evil. Before all that, though, I want to do another very quick use test with the following goals. Figure out what kind of quantity of energy should be stored in one charge. Are we talking 16 1 hour of TV or 2 days of it? At what point can users simply ignore the object and at what point does it become an incredible nuisance? Do people respond to the malfunction effects and cues I have come up with? Do people know they can also check up on the object before it starts malfunctioning - and can also recharge it as such? Does the system indeed have the envisioned effect?

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