Cool and the Gang: Design Insights for Engaging Student Energy Interventions

Transcription

1 Cool and the Gang: Design Insights for Engaging Student Energy Interventions Derek Foster School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, LN6 7TS, UK Conor Linehan School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, LN6 7TS, UK Maureen Schoonheyt Hague University of Applied Sciences, Johanna Westerdijkplein 75, The Hague, Netherlands, Shaun Lawson School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, LN6 7TS, UK Abstract Interventions that aim to motivate students in halls of residence to engage in more eco-friendly behaviour face a number of unique problems. Specifically, a large portion of university accommodation provides utilities such as electricity, water and gas at fixed cost as part of tenancy contracts. In the absence of financial motivators, energy interventions for special groups such as students require a stronger focus on participatory and experience design to understand the design implications of successful technology-led energy interventions. This work presents the findings of a thematic analysis drawn from a large corpus of qualitative design challenge data including focus groups, questionnaires and interviews. Findings provided design insights for developing cool and engaging energy interventions for students. Author Keywords Energy; Sustainability; Participatory Design ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Usercentred design Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). CHI 2013 Extended Abstracts, April 27 May 2, 2013, Paris, France. ACM /13/04. General Terms Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

2 Figure 1. Ambient Power-aware cord Figure 2. Home energy monitor with ambient display Introduction Much work has been carried out by the HCI community in the design of persuasive technologies [5] to encourage more positive lifestyles, for example in health [1] and sustainable living [7][1] with varying levels of success. For the most part, when a reward is present and attainable in a given intervention such as weight loss, increased wellbeing or reduced costs by saving energy then antecedent behavioral change strategies can be highly effective [10]. However, when the reward is embodied as an abstract concept, with no tangible immediate or short term positive gain to the participating individual or group, then careful consideration has to be given to the embedded social and cultural beliefs of the target users. This is to ensure interventions without obvious and quantifiable rewards are designed with social and cultural values in mind, thereby facilitating positive resonation with attributes of the target users lifestyles. A cascading effect of this approach should bring about higher engagement levels which may lead to effective long term behavior change. This work builds upon recent work by Read et al [12] and Fitton et al [4] in designing cool and engaging sustainability technologies, and more generally on Odom s student energy visualization work [11], which face the same challenge of incentivizing reductions in users who are not financially responsible for the consumption of a resource, in this case energy. By drawing on a specific group s perception of what is cool and desirable in terms of interaction experiences, in this case a group of students, it is assumed greater levels of engagement will take place in a targeted energy intervention. In this paper we encouraged participants to openly define what they perceived cool to be, in the context of individuals and groups. A similar approach in Read and Fitton s work revealed teenagers desired to tap into specific group dynamics such as peer pressure, personal goals and achievement, with emphasis on personalization to make engaging with their energy use practices more desirable. They also found clear age and gender differences on perceptions of cool and how particular technologies embody coolness and can play a part in facilitating social identity and belonging to a group. While cool may be defined within a cultural group with its own rules on what is/how to exhibit cool, inclusive design for coolness is a challenging area of research. Presented in this work-in-progress are the thematic analysis findings drawn from student focus groups, questionnaires, and interviews based around designing a technology-enabled energy intervention using feedback that attempts to integrate the concept of cool. The intervention target users are students living in official halls of residence and exempt from paying energy bills. The main themes generated from the analysis will guide the final designs for implementation and experimental trials in planned future work for the Killawhats student energy project [9]. Can Energy-Feedback be Cool? To further put this work in perspective, previous work in designing sustainable technologies has used artistic and ambient prototypes that are aesthetically pleasing and could easily be termed cool. Work by Gustafsson and Gyllenward [8] produced the Power Aware Cord, an innovative approach to ambient per-appliance energy monitoring. It utilised feedback in the form of ambient light emitting from the cord to indicate an appliance s current consumption, see figure 1. Ambient lights are also used in the Wattson energy monitor [3]

3 Figure 3. Example of interactive paper prototype displaying Figure 4. Example of Cool/Uncool wall images for questionnaires on coolness Figure 5. Example of card sorting and other user-centred design activities which is availabe in a wood finish in figure 2. Both these ambient technologies provide an alternative way of monitoring energy consumption, allowing the owners of such devices to express their sustainable interests outside conventional means. In the absence of using monitoring devices, and instead using low barrier, easy to access web applications, previous work by the authors demonstrated how a design theme of it s cool to be uncool through alternative feedback in a domestic energy intervention engaged participants and resulted in a positive experience [6]. The work presented here aims to extend our alternative energy feedback research and the work of others in understanding the design implications of sustainability technologies that offer a cool and engaging end-user experience Design Process The Killawhats energy initiative is the overarching project the work presented here forms part of. In order to adequately guide the requirements gathering and design needs for the online intervention component of Killawhats, a design challenge was created involving 105 students (aged 18-24) taking part in a humancomputer interaction module, a large proportion of who were representative of intervention target users. Participating students were required to use a range of user-centred design (UCD) methods to gather requirements and to prototype interactions. Design Challenge The design task carried out was encapsulated in the challenge statement: Design a technology-led and socially-enabled energy intervention; that is both engaging and cool, for students in official accommodation blocks, that encourages more sustainable energy-use practices. To address the challenge, at least two UCD methods were used by each participating student including focus groups, interviews, and questionnaires with mandatory paper prototyping (see figures 3,4 & 5). This created a large corpus of qualitative design data from students. A sample of the design data produced by students (20% = 21 students) was selected by the authors in this work. The selection contained the more interesting work, and was supplemented by over 6 hours of audio data transcriptions taken by the authors during participatory design focus groups with 80 students. The resultant body of qualitative data was then initially filtered into a list of conceptual labels to generate a rigorous thematic analysis. Thematic Analysis A thematic analysis was conducted on the data, as this approach has been found useful when working in littleunderstood domains. It can also provide robust and practical design insights. Presented in this section are the main themes generated from the analysis, with quotes from the raw data indicative of each theme. A total of 166 relevant conceptual labels formed of short sentences and quotes were derived from the corpus of design data by one researcher. A category code list was agreed upon with another researcher to produce the final coding nomenclature resulting in a code list of 22 categories. Findings and Discussion Eleven first order themes were identified, which formed four second order themes, namely Defining Cool,

4 Competition, Accountability and Social Practices, which are illustrated in figure 6. Engagement Defining cool Competition Accountability Social practices Group activities State of the art technology Personal nostalgia Leaderboards Incentives Energy Help & Tips Don t pay the bill Usage as a necessity Climate change Digital Entertainment Cooking Figure 6. Hierarchical diagram of themes from analysis The remainder of this section will discuss each of the second order themes with brief mention of some of the related first order themes due to limited space. Supporting quotes from the design data for each described theme are used throughout. Defining Cool Articulating what the concept of cool means to individuals and groups was frequently present in the data. Also emergent from the data was the idea that a physical object or abstracted concept termed cool was in part due to subjective personal taste. State of the art technology was deemed to be universally cool, as were social group activities such as membership of university sports and other specialist societies. Quotes indicated that perceiving something to be cool was thought of as being at a personal level: P1: if something is cool, it s obviously got something going for it so I will like try it and see what I think of it, but I won t necessarily think it is cool because other people do. and P2: I think cool is really something from person to person. Each person has its own idea of what is cool, and what isn t but let s say on a general basis, a trend, or things that refer to something that s already cool, let s say like the batman mobile and P3: It seems that the majority of people like a small section of things, and that makes those subsections cool. And then there is the minority, which likes a lot of other thing which are considered not cool cause not many people like them Modern technology was frequently categorized as being cool and desirable: P4: anything cutting edge, modern and connected is right up there in terms of coolness, certainly things like tablets and smartphones and P5: something that s cool and trendy has to fit in with modern conventions such as keeping things slim-lined Competition Competition in the form of leaderboards displaying a number of student accommodation blocks consumption levels in a competitive fashion was a commonly recurring theme from the data. Competitive attributes included incentives such as vouchers as a reward for winning by using less energy. P6: implement some sort of leader-board amongst friends and student blocks that could be published on Facebook or some other social networking sites, it d be good as well as it d encourage competition and P7: if

5 iyour flat saves a lot of energy, you get a food voucher towards the end of the year for 30 or 40 quid off at Morrisons or wherever. So, stuff like that people would want because it is useful. Accountability This theme was discussed somewhat passionately in a negative and positive light throughout the data and is closely linked to how an individual or group may ultimately engage or disengage with an energy intervention. Some of the data suggests when individuals aren t responsible for paying their energy costs they adopt the stance of disengagement with an intervention, even when rewards for savings are possible. Indicators that energy use practices of an individual can in no way influence climate change issues was also present. The findings from this theme show there are issues around responsibility for the wider environmental impact and the socio-economic factors of energy usage patterns when the resource can be consumed with no financial consequences. However, and somewhat encouragingly, examples of desiring to reduce and optimize the way energy is used were tentatively described; these examples expressed a level of understanding for the need for reductions, but echoed an inability on how to achieve it, with the suggestion of help in the form of energy tips in an intervention. Disregarding personal energy consumption when not responsible for payment was evident in the data, sometimes with an attitude of it s acceptable to use more of a resource because it s free: P8: I don t pay for it do don t see any need to reduce. and P9: I don t currently care about my energy usage due to my fixed billed and P10: the fact that we don t have to pay just makes us like meh, we might as well make the most of it Non-negotiability of energy use was a common sentiment, because of necessity of use: P11: I need most of my stuff on however it has shocked me how much I use and P12: to be honest there isn t much I could cut down on because as a gaming student I need a lot of electrical things and P13: my heating is always on in my flat, and I mean always. It s so cold here all the time. Understanding accountability with responsible energy consumption, but without the knowledge to bring about reductions was described: P14: I am concerned about the energy I use, but at the same time I m not too fussed as I have no way of telling how much energy I m using and P15: if I am over using my energy I d like the device to give me hints and tips on how to reduce my energy usage Social Practices The theme of social practices highlighted many students use energy as a group for social activities such as watching movies, gaming and cooking. For the most part social practices were deemed enjoyable and not something to give up without good justification: P16: It is a good thing to waste your time. You are watching one video and from then on you are 10 video s down. and P17: I cook for my flat-mates, so I use the oven almost every day, even though that

6 means they don t have to use it. That means I'd be doing worse at saving energy even if it s not my fault. Conclusions and Further Work Our analysis provides a rich account of student perceptions and attitudes towards energy consumption as part of their social practices and daily non-negotiable activities. This paper presents important design insights for students, and other user groups, who do not pay for end-user energy with a particular understanding of the need to be more aware of their accountability and responsible use of a finite resource such as energy. Implications for design were garnered from the thematic analysis which will be used to robustly guide the final designs of the Killawhats intervention study. A longitudinal study is planned involving 398 students at a UK university. The generated themes of Defining Cool, Competition, Accountability and Social Practices encapsulate the building blocks for successful engagement with a student energy intervention that should lead to positive behavior change by mapping the design insights over to the relevant behavior change methodologies. Acknowledgements We thank all the students at the Lincoln School of Computer Science who contributed to this work. This work was funded by the JISC Transformations Programme Strand D. References [1] Blevis, E Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse. In Proc. CHI 2007, ACM Press (2007), [2] Campbell, T., Ngo, B., and Fogarty, J. Game Design Principles in Everyday Fitness Applications. In. Proc. of Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2008, ACM Press (2008), [3] DIY KYOTO, DIY KYOTO Wattson, available from [4] Fitton, D. Read, J., Beale, R., Cowan, B., and Guo, Y. Creating Cool Mobile Technologies To Reduce Teen Energy Use, In Workshop at CHI2011, Persuasion, Influence, Nudge & Coercion through mobile devices. [5] Fogg, B.J. Persuasive Technology Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, [6] Foster, D., Linehan, C., Lawson, S., and Kirman, B. Power ballads: deploying aversive energy feedback in social media. In Proc. Of CHI Ext. Abstracts 2011, ACM Press (2011), [7] Froehlich, J., Findlater, L., and Landay, J. The design of eco-feedback technology. In Proc. CHI 2010, ACM Press (2010), [8] Gustafsson, A. and Gyllenswärd, M. The poweraware cord: energy awareness through ambient information display. In Proc. of CHI Ext. Abstracts 2005, ACM Press (2005), [9] JISC, Programme Strand D - Improved environmental performance, available fromhttp:// mes/transformations/round3/universityoflincolnstrandbi ddoc.pdf [10] Martin, G. & Pear, J. Behavior Modification. What it is and how to do it. Pearson Education International, Boston, [11] Odom, W., Pierce, J., and Roedl, D. Social Incentive & Eco-Visualization Displays: Toward Persuading Greater Change in Dormitory Communities. In Proc. OZCHI (2008) Conference. [12] Read, J. Fitton, D., Cowan, B., Beale, R., Guo, Y., and Horton, M. Understanding and designing cool technologies for teenagers. In Proc. CHI Ext. Abstracts 2011, ACM Press (2011),