Research Household Energy Consumption - adrienerice/The_Chosen_Ones GitHub Wiki
Interviews
Interview Insights
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When asked about their own personal efforts to conserve energy within the household some participants reported minimal efforts, while others reported efforts that would mostly be considered habitual or rational efforts such as turning off lights in unused rooms. This supports the idea that energy conservation efforts by most household members, regardless of age, are typically done out of habit or routine, rather than conscious awareness and motivation to conserve energy. This insight is supported by the research article (Strengers, 2011), where it is described that activities are shaped by various factors and follow the ever changing expectations and practices in society, sometimes even not correlating with rationality.
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It is clear that providing more detailed, understandable and easily interpretable data would be a good first step to addressing the issue of this problem space. This simple insight is supported by (Strengers, 2011), where awareness of ones habits and actions, as well as these habits and actions being open to criticism ad scrutiny, would be integral in order to motivate change within the user.
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When users were prompted to describe features they would like to see when viewing their energy consumption, their responses were all revolved around breaking down consumption or cost into aspects that were more understandable and helped them make connections between appliances and how the use of these appliances affected their overall consumption. This shows that users value and want access to information that helps them make connections between their behaviour and energy consumption, a topic supported and deeply discussed in the research articles above.
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All participants reported not discussing energy conservation to other household members beyond basic statements such as "Please turn off the lights", this insinuates that there is potential for more meaningful discussions if the issue was more prevalent. Additionally, participants who had no responsibility in paying for the electricity bill showed minimal consideration for consumption. The lack of consideration for personal consumption, as well as the idea that "Please turn off the lights/air conditioner", is considered adequate discussion for energy conservation shows that there is a major disconnect between user behaviour and energy consumption. This insight is supported by the research article (Backlund et al., 2007), describing how current designs of appliances, as well as feedback systems, fail to address the disconnection users have with their behaviour and energy consumption, and that energy is an invisible concept that is given no thought.
Questionnaire
Questionnaire Insights
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Majority of participants with a non-close relationship with their household members reported cooking and doing laundry individually.
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With the introduction of air-conditioning and dryers, the concept of comfortability as well as the promotion of air-conditioning and dryers being a commercial interest has resulted in a significant shift in household expectations and standards where these appliances have "become inscribed into buildings and technical systems" (Ropke, 2005). The findings in the article by Ropke are highly relevant to the findings of this questionnaire, as it has been clearly seen how the use of cooling appliances like fans and air-conditioners and the use of dryers have become standard practice in all participant homes.
References
Ropke, I. (2005). E. Shove, Comfort, cleanliness and convenience: the social organization of normality, Berg Publishers, Oxford and New York (2003) ISBN 1859736300 224 pp. Ecological Economics, 53(1), 144–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.11.005**
Backlund, S., Gyllenswärd, M., Gustafsson, A., Ilstedt Hjelm, S., Mazé, R., & Redström, J. (2007). STATIC! The Aesthetics of Energy in Everyday Things. In STATIC.
Strengers, Y. (2011). Designing eco-feedback systems for everyday life. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2135–2144. https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979252
Rogers, Y. (2006). Moving on from Weiser’s Vision of Calm Computing: Engaging UbiComp Experiences. UbiComp 2006: Ubiquitous Computing, 404–421. https://doi.org/10.1007/11853565_24
Intille, S. (2002). Designing a home of the future. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 1(2), 76–82. https://doi.org/10.1109/MPRV.2002.1012340