Information System & Service Design
Fall 2008, UC Berkeley
University Village Energy Management
Agenda
1
Project Motivation & Scope
2
Stakeholders, Requirements & Models
3
Prototype: Web Interface
4
Prototype: Free Standing Display
5
Prototype: iPhone Application
6
Future Work
Project Scope
University Village is a university run "family housing" community
of 760 apartments and townhouses in Albany, California.
Utility costs are included (hidden) in the rent.
An information system is needed to:
• Give village administrators insights into tenant consumption
• Allow automation and easier interaction with household appliances
• Give residents feedback about their consumption
Overall Goal: Reduce energy costs
Design Project
Where it all started...
Agenda
1
Project Motivation & Scope
2
Stakeholders, Requirements & Models
3
Prototype: Web Interface
4
Prototype: Free Standing Display
5
Prototype: iPhone Application
6
Future Work
Stakeholders
Following a bottom-up Energy Management approach, we hoped to put more
design emphasis on family and community interests.
Tier 1
UC Village Administration, Front Desk and IT Staff
Residents
Tier 2
UC California
Energy Providers (PG&E)
Hardware Suppliers
Tier 3
State of California
Environmental Protection Agencies
Energy Conservation Group
Requirements at UC Village
Must Have
Analyze effectiveness of the system.
Classify tenants by usage at the apartment and appliance
levels.
Make adjusting power consumption in common areas
transparent.
Lower energy bills.
Should Have
Improve attractiveness of UC Village for renters
Improve public relations
Could Have
Track and monitor outlier individual units on an on-going basis.
Monitor price differences based on peak and off-peak usage.
Requirements of Residents
Must Have
Feedback on how much energy is being used at multiple levels.
Make adjusting power usage transparent.
Lower their power consumption/carbon.
Should Have
Be comfortable.
Could Have
Allow choices between consuming at peak versus off-peak time.
Business Level Use Cases
Make adjustment of the energy consuming appliance's settings
as automatic and transparent as possible for the UC Village
residents and administration.
Provide the UC Village residents and administration with realtime and on-going feedback about their energy consumption.
Provide the UC Village residents and administration with
improved visibility of the state of their appliances.
System Level Use Case Example
Scope: User communicates with a System which in turn
communicates with all Appliances in the Apartment of the User.
Service Blueprint
Design Activities
User Survey and Diary
Competitive Analysis
Technology Push
Literature Review
Design Requirements
Multi-Platform capability, but Free Standing Display is principal
Overall system awareness of appliances
Disaggregation by user
Personalized visualization
Covering all utilities: energy AND gas, water, and air quality
Predicting usage patterns and use of historic information
Agenda
1
Project Motivation & Scope
2
Stakeholders, Requirements & Models
3
Prototype: Web Interface
4
Prototype: Free Standing Display
5
Prototype: iPhone Application
6
Future Work
Prototype: Online Energy Dashboard
Customize and control every
aspect of your home energy
usage--from any computer
Prototype: Online Energy Dashboard
Prototype: Online Energy Dashboard
Agenda
1
Project Motivation & Scope
2
Stakeholders, Requirements & Models
3
Prototype: Web Interface
4
Prototype: Free Standing Display
5
Prototype: iPhone Application
6
Future Work
Free Standing Display: Low Energy Consumption
Free Standing Display: High Energy Consumption
Free Standing Display: Alert
Free Standing Display: Village News
Agenda
1
Project Motivation & Scope
2
Stakeholders, Requirements & Models
3
Prototype: Web Interface
4
Prototype: Free Standing Display
5
Prototype: iPhone Application
6
Future Work
Prototype: Mobile Application
Mobile application
Either alternative to free-standing display or
as an extension to one
Keep multi-platform focus
iPhone works well for implementation of mobile application
Prototype: Mobile Application
Justification
User survey
iPhone app very desirable
“Would be really cool”
Literature review
Free-standing display is important
Competitive Analysis
No companies focus specifically on mobile
applications for energy management
Can access energy usage information
over the web, alerts over SMS
There already exist implementations of
free-standing displays such as Wattson
and T.E.D. (The Energy Detective)
iPhone is very popular
Prototype: Mobile Application
Use Scenarios
Resident walks out of the house and doesn’t remember if he
turned off the lights
Checks iPhone to see whether any lights are on
If so, then tap on the light to turn it off
Coming home from work on a cold winter day, the resident
may want the heater turned up to a certain temperature
Use the iPhone to adjust temperature to desired level
Convenience factor: the resident is lounging on the couch,
with a nice cold drink in hand and a warm meal on his lap,
then realizes that the light in the kitchen is still on
Grabs iPhone from pocket and turns off the light
Prototype: Mobile Application
Disadvantages of implementation
Not everyone owns an iPhone, despite its
widespread popularity
It can only be used by one user, namely, the
owner of the iPhone
Unsuitable for managing dense amounts of
information such as setting up and configuring
energy management—these operations are
intended for a computer
Agenda
1
Project Motivation & Scope
2
Stakeholders, Requirements & Models
3
Prototype: Web Interface
4
Prototype: Free Standing Display
5
Prototype: iPhone Application
6
Future Work
Future Work
User testing on the prototype
Look further into energy data manipulation
Opportunities to work with current campus research projects
Questions?