Project3

Last modified by Holger Dick on 2010/09/28 13:50

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Project-3: Representing and Visualizing Energy Use

Background

An issue with changing behaviors surrounding energy use is the sense that most aspects of our energy sources and consumption are invisible, except for the bills we receive at the end of the month.

Efforts such as smart-meters, ubiquitous point-of-use sensors [kill-a-watt, tweet-a-watt, patel], and intelligent appliances [GE] are beginning to make more information available, but abstract units like kwh do not mean much to most people and the monetary equivalents are miniscule. How can we make sure that the provided information is meaningful to people?

Starting Points

Sites such as Google Powermeter, Microsoft Hohm, and Gridpoint tend to utilize more “scientific” style of presentation using graphs, charts, and tables, whereas other approaches [Holmes, Abeles, Ford-hybrid-leaves] have worked to utilize more artistic and emotion-based approaches to get encourage understanding. Still others utilize “fun” [piano-stairs] as encouragement for behavior change.

The field of information visualization is an active field within computer science (e.g. [Shneiderman]) aiming to create an understanding how to represent information in an easy digestible fashion.

But what representations really make a difference in terms of energy savings? Initial studies [Dick] using Amazon Mechanical Turk indicate that representing energy use as measures of coal had a greater impact than monetary units or a very basic ‘eco visualization’ (tree offsets).

How should we develop new representations and validate their impact? What is the role of exploration and simulation in this area?

Objectives

Develop new ideas for new visualizations/representations. Support this idea with a theory or model of how why your representation should be effective. You can make use of technologies such as tweet-a-watt, web 2.0 environments, mobile devices (android/iPad).
Implement a demo/prototype of your new representation
Develop ways to test your representation; you could use:
- AMTurk,
- User Studies, or
- Other methods

Perform initial assessments and present results
(potential further work: independent study, create more robust implementation and evaluate in after-school activities)