How Can We Use Digital Tools to Reduce Urban Household Energy Usage?

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Workshop

Brief: The pilot housing project called Ecoplace in Zürich offers its residents sustainable living in a convenient environment. Using intelligent technology, the daily consumption of water, electricity and heat is tracked for every apartment. Through the visualization of this data the inhabitants are made aware of their

behavior and encouraged to save our planet's resources. The question which the workshop participants tried to answer is: how can we exploit the possibilities of technology to raise awareness of household energy consumption and how can we help people improve their behavior?

Project
IXT Workshop at Lift Conference
Date
Feb 8th 2013
Duration
3 hours
Participants
18
Case 1

Energy Gremlin

Energy Gremlin is an avatar with some special preferences for energy efficient behavior. If the toy-like creature feels like you are wasting energy he will notify you kindly to help you reduce your consumption.

Subject
Playing Games
Participants
Estelle Hary, Giorgio Pauletto, Merel Segers, Richard Goldstein

Benefits

  • Cute/Lovabel
  • Provide gentle reminders not judging
  • Parents (indirectly) and younger generation (directly) create good habits
  • Solar powered

Challenges

  • Anoying
  • Carbon Footprint (Production etc.)
Case 2

Agora

Agora is the concept of a marketplace for energy where smart devices act as brokers and exchange the access to energy independantly and efficiently while respecting moral limitations of our society.

Subject
Intelligent Devices
Participants
Vincent Girardin, Edith Page, Alfonso Munoz

Benefits

  • Act on forecast
  • Anticipate
  • Smart (true) usage
  • Financial savings as well as reduction of carbon footprint
  • Consumption knowledge
  • Ecological conscience
  • Abstraction

Challenges

  • Legacy household appliances
  • House limitations (...?)
  • Natively compliant devices
  • Initial investment costs
Case 3

Lite Switch

Lite Switch is a physical switch that reacts to human interaction based on the type of energy consumtption. Switching on the light is effortless for green energy while it is hard when using fossile energy sources.

Subject
Quantified Home
Participants
Martin Spindler, Patricia Crousaz-Pantet, Olivier Crochat

Benefits

  • Make it harder if you use "bad energy"

Challenges

  • Color
  • Tactile feedback
  • Punishment
  • Elderly/ disabled people?

Downloads

You can find all workshop relevant documents and files on this website. If there is something you miss, please don't hesitate to contact us.