Herrmann, MR;
Brumby, DP;
Oreszczyn, T;
(2017)
Watts your usage? A field study of householders' literacy for residential electricity data.
Energy Efficiency
10.1007/s12053-017-9555-y.
(In press).
Preview |
Text
10.1007_s12053-017-9555-y.pdf - Published Version Download (853kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Smart metering studies typically focus on quantifying behavior change. However, little is known about how users understand energy information and analyze and interpret feedback from energy data visualizations. To investigate this, we gave 13 participants from nine UK households an electricity power clamp meter. Prior to installing and using the device, we conducted interviews with participants to gauge their understanding of their home electricity consumption and found that participants varied considerably from limited to substantial energy literacy. Two weeks after the clamp meter had been installed, we conducted a contextual inquiry in which we asked participants to explain the web-based time series visualization of their recorded electricity data. We found that the visualization proved unfit: participants relied on memories and suggested likely routines, while widely being unable to reliably identify specific events in the data visualization. In follow-up interviews 3 months later, we found that participants’ understanding of their home electricity consumption had hardly changed. Finally, we invited participants to generate ideas how smart electricity feedback could be optimized. They named different forms of disaggregation, higher temporal resolution, and interactivity as design requirements. In summary, these results suggest that people find home energy data very difficult to understand and link to everyday actions and behaviors.
Type: | Article |
---|---|
Title: | Watts your usage? A field study of householders' literacy for residential electricity data |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.1007/s12053-017-9555-y |
Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12053-017-9555-y |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | Copyright © The Author(s) 2017. Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Electricity feedback, Behavior change, Energy literacy, Data visualization, Disaggregation |
UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > UCL Interaction Centre UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Bartlett School Env, Energy and Resources |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1573465 |
Archive Staff Only
View Item |