Designed to support or impede energy conservation? How design characteristics influence people's energy use (original) (raw)

Home, Habits, and Energy: Examining Domestic Interactions and Energy Consumption

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of people's everyday interactions with energy-consuming products and systems in the home. Initial results from a large online survey are also considered. This research focuses not only on "conservation behavior" but importantly investigates interactions with technology that may be characterized as "normal consumption" or "overconsumption." A novel vocabulary for analyzing and designing energy-conserving interactions is proposed based on our findings, including: cutting, trimming, switching, upgrading, and shifting. Using the proposed vocabulary, and informed by theoretical developments from various literatures, this paper demonstrates ways in which everyday interactions with technology in the home are performed without conscious consideration of energy consumption but rather are unconscious, habitual, and irrational. Implications for the design of energy-conserving interactions with technology and broader challenges for HCI research are proposed.

Reducing Domestic Energy Consumption: A User-Centred Design Approach

Energy use within the UK domestic sector is on the increase, causing significant environmental and social stresses. This increase in energy consumption is not only due to the rising proliferation of technological devices within the home, but also to their context of use, and the behaviours and habits attributed to and enacted through their operation. To reduce energy consumption we need to engage with householders in meaningful and effective ways to prompt more efficient behaviour. This paper examines the role of design in influencing a change in energy using behaviours within the context of social housing. Drawing upon the findings of an interdisciplinary literature review the authors outline the impact of domestic comfort practices on energy use. The emerging field of Design for Sustainable Behaviour is mapped out with relevant behaviour models and theories, and factors which could inform the development of design interventions to promote energy reducing comfort practices in social housing are discussed. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the types of interventions which could prove effective in reducing energy consumption in social housing whilst still delivering comfort.

Design Framework of Household Appliance for Users’ Sustainable Behaviors

The Anthropologist, 2014

Residential sectors consume one-fifth of global energy that all sectors have actively invested in the enhancement of residential energy efficiency. User behaviors could affect residential energy efficiency that it is regarded as a foresighted research to change unsustainable behaviors with product design. This study aims to discuss the psycho-social determinants in individual energy-saving behaviors and ensure the product design strategies and methods of the mapping determinants to reduce the difference between sustainable design intention and real product operation. With the mode for goal-directed behaviors to study the determinants in household appliance energy-saving behaviors, personal desire could directly affect energy-saving Behavioral Intention and individual Perceived Behavioral Control, Positive Anticipated Emotion, Attitude, and Frequency of Past Behavior would indirectly affect energy-saving behavioral intention through personal desire. The design strategies of ego-information, ego-feedback, and ego-selectivity are the best household appliance intervention design strategies in energy-saving behaviors. Based on the research results, a product designer could establish the mapping relation matrix between product design intervention strategy as the tactic, and psycho-social determinants in energy-saving behaviors as the objective to design the more practicable household appliance for sustainable behaviors.

People and Energy: A design-led approach to understanding everyday energy use behaviour

Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, 2013

Reducing home energy use is a major societal challenge, involving behaviour change alongside infrastructure improvements. However, many approaches lump 'energy demand' together as something homogeneous, addressable primarily through quantitative feedback, rather than basing interventions on an understanding of why people use energy as they do. Our contention is that people don't set out to 'use energy': its use is a side effect of solving everyday problems, meeting needs for comfort, light, cooking, cleaning, entertainment, and so on.

Understanding Energy Behaviour – A Necessity for Supporting Domestic Energy Conservation through Design

Understanding Energy behaviour-A Necessity for supporting Domestic Energy conservation through Design Anneli selvefors department of product and production development division design & human factors chalmers University of Technology domestic energy consumption is continuing to increase and the need to decrease consumption is growing more evident. in this research, two studies were conducted to further the understanding of domestic energy behaviour and increase the knowledge of how energy conservation can be supported. The first study was carried out as an interview study to explore both factors that influence people's energy behaviour and strategies people currently have adopted for reducing consumption. The second study was a field trial that assessed the extent to which an energy feedback system could support households in reducing their consumption. The findings show that many different factors, i.e., factors related to the person, the activity, and the society, influence people's domestic energy behaviour as well as their engagement in reducing their energy consumption. as these factors collectively set the preconditions for people's energy behaviour, it is vital to take into account the interconnection of the different factors when aiming to support energy conservation. for systems and products to be successful in supporting energy conservation, they need to match the preconditions in a way that enables people to reduce consumption while still satisfying their everyday needs and goals. as this research have indicated, energy feedback systems can support motivated people who have the ability and possibility to reduce consumption, but will be a less successful support system for people whose consumption is governed by preconditions that they cannot, or will not, change. a holistic understanding of people's preconditions and their energy related activities is thus required in order to develop successful products, services, and systems that enable, facilitate, or encourage more people to reduce their domestic energy consumption.

Assessing user behaviour for changes in the design of energy using domestic products

This paper explores the contribution that user behaviour could make to the creation of new energy efficient products. It does this by first looking at the energy demand of 6 households then discusses the identification of the products with the highest potential for improvement. This is then narrowed down to products with a high energy impact and those where a high level of human interaction and use is also evident. A model for guiding design changes based on a theoretical minimum energy level for each product is presented. The paper ends with a behaviour based design assessment procedure based on the results of the 6 household study.

The potential for domestic energy savings through assessing user behaviour and changes in design

2007

The paper explores the possibility of looking at user behaviour as a way of creating new energy efficient products. It does this by first looking at the energy demand of 6 households then discusses the possibilities and potential of identifying the products with the highest potential for improvement. This is achieved by considering those with high energy use in combination with the difference from its theoretical minimum energy level and the most human interaction. The paper ends with results and discussion from a user behaviour video study of a kitchen.

Aiming to miss: lessons for design research from the study of everyday energy practices

This paper argues that the historical focus of design research on the design process-designers themselves, their activities, decisions and rationale-conceals many design relevant phenomena that emerge in the use of products and systems. With regard to designing for sustainability, these phenomena become vital, since sustainability is itself a use practice. We present a set of vignettes from an ethnographic study of people's everyday energy practices, in an effort to show how consumption is grounded in the intersections of various elements including architecture, habit and social values. This gives pause to reconsider designers' roles in determining (through products and architecture) such patterns of energy use, and leads us to recommend that a different kind of scenario, i.e. one that 'aims to miss' the deliberate and intended use, may be helpful in sustainable product design. We conclude with a discussion that outlines how the study of mundane practices of use might be instructive for agendas and concepts in design research, particularly those of framing and design intent.

Communicating eco-efficiency through interface and product design: The case of domestic appliances

The European appliance industry in the recent years has identified eco-efficiency as one of the most important issues to be addressed both in terms of customer demand and technology capability. It is both a very big challenge and an opportunity for manufacturing companies in this sector. In a much broader context 'sustainability' has pervaded quite deeply into the design and manufacturing worlds, but in the context of domestic appliances, the guiding principles of sustainability i.e.: environmental stewardship, social equity, & development-rather than growth, have not quite penetrated.