0968588 SoCS:
Energy Sustainability and Smart Grids: Fostering and Supporting
Cultures of Participation in the Energy Landscape of the Future
Gerhard Fischer, Holger Dick, Jason Zietz, & Hal Eden
ENERGYSIGNS: Semiotic Design of
Motivating Representations
What are Useful Energy
Representations?
E NERGY S IGNS Design Guidelines
• Evaluate the Cognitive Perception
Cognitive Perception
The Three Dimensions of
Motivating and Meaningful
Representations
?
How attention-catching and intuitively
meaningful is the representation?
Socially Shared Understanding
Is the representation likely to draw attention?
Is the representation memorable?
Does the representation convey something when you look at/listen to/
perceive it for a split-second?
• Evaluate the Socially Shared Understanding
Representation
How familiar are the users
with the used representation?
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•
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How personally meaningful is the
used representation to the users?
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•
•
Personal and Emotional Understanding
Will users understand what the representation stands for
Will users have a mental model of what the representation stands for?
Will users be able to use the mental model to calculate with it or scale it
mentally? (e.g. can they say how much of it they use per day/per year?)
• Evaluate the Personal and Emotional Interpretation
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What associations are users likely to have when confronted with the
representation?
Will users have feelings towards the representation?
Will users care about the representation (e.g. would they mind wasting or
losing it?)
EMPIRE: Empowering People in
Reducing Energy Consumption
Smart Meter
SOCIALENERGY Theory
Theory
Social Norms: People compare
themselves to perceived norms
Social Norms: People compare
themselves to perceived norms
Injunctive Norms: Descriptive
norms can result in a “boomerang
effect”
Social Proof: In moments of
uncertainty, other individuals’
actions are copied
Social Proof: The more people
that are observed acting a certain
way, the more likely it is that the
action is copied
SocialEnergy Design Guideline
Users have to be able to access
their own consumption
Create awareness of norms among
relevant user base
Show whether deviation from
norm is good/bad
Smart Meter
Metering Infrastructure
Identify and show concrete rolemodels
EMPIRE Server
Create awareness of actions or
behaviors that are being adopted
and of their growing popularity
Smart Meter
Design Evaluation of Energy
Units based on ENERGYSIGNS
Tendril Server
Process SocialEnergy Data
Software Back E nd
Smart Meter
Present Data Based on EnergySigns
Software Front End
ENERGYSIGNS- & SOCIALENERGYbased Widgets
Study: Effects of
SOCIALENERGY-based Interfaces
Do systems following the SOCIALENERGY framework
motivate people to save energy?
P s ycholog ical R equirements
Interface R equirements
Interface Elements
Assessment
L owest C onsumption
Awareness of Role Models
User Trends
Average C onsumption
How should the user change their consumption?
(1=definitely decrease, 7=definitely increase), N=77,
p=0.01
•
Theory
System
Building
Injunctions
C onsumption Norms
Own C onsumption
C omparison to S elf
Understanding of C onsumption
Emotional Unit
K nown Unit For more information:
Dick, H. (2013) Socio-­‐Technical Frameworks and Systems that Motivate People to Reduce their Energy Consumption. PhD Dissertation, University of Colorado Boulder, available at: http://
l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~ho-­‐di/dissertation.pdf
Dick, H., Eden, H., Fischer, G., & Zietz, J. (2012) "Empowering Users to Become Designers: Using Meta-­‐Design Environments to Enable and Motivate Sustainable Energy Decisions." In K. Halskov, H. Winschiers-­‐Theophilus, Y. Lee, Y. Simonsen, & K. Bødker (Eds.), Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference (PDC 2012) Volume 2, Roskilde, Denmark, pp. 49-­‐52.
Fischer, G. (2011) "Understanding, Fostering, and Supporting Cultures of Participation," ACM Interactions XVIII.3 (May + June 2011), pp. 42-­‐53
Project URL: http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/wordpress/grants/socs-­‐
theoretical-­‐frameworks-­‐and-­‐socio-­‐technical-­‐systems-­‐for-­‐
fostering-­‐smart-­‐communities-­‐in-­‐smart-­‐grid-­‐environments/