Green Interfaces

Experience and interaction designs for sustainability

Sustainable CHI Conferences and Papers

Position papers for the "Pervasive Persuasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability" workshop of Pervasive 2008 will soon be posted online (The event also has a Facebook page).  Workshop organizer Marcus Foth, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation, recently announced the selections, among them: "Using persuasive technology to encourage sustainable behavior", from ...

Green Social Goal-setting on Edenbee

Edenbee is a social network working to tackle climate change through better personal choices (with a little encouragement from like-minded souls). It went into an invitational beta* earlier this month. It has all of the essentials of a social network — ways to build a network with friends, ...

Carbon Calculations on Dopplr

Tom Raftery* at lowerfootprint.com notes that soon Dopplr will be adding carbon footprinting to the service. Dopplr is a social networking site for frequent travelers, designed to aid serendipity in travel. Users can tell their friends and colleagues of travel plans, and see who's going to be at ...

Visualizing Sustainability Panel at SXSWi

Today at SXSW Interactive, Jon Lebkowsky moderated a great panel called Visualizing Sustainability. I'll write something up about this panel in the next few days, but meanwhile, here (29 Mb .mp3) is an OK-quality recording made with my laptop. I expect a recording of better quality ...

Advocating for Sustainable Design and Open Knowledge-Sharing

“Our first green products must be ourselves.” In the summer of 02007, Valarie Casey, current head of software/digital experiences at IDEO, wrote an article in frog design’s bi-monthly newsletter DesignMind called the Designer’s Dilemma. She wrote, Our addiction to sweeping change has hobbled us from seeing the most obvious opportunities for ...

About

This blog addresses sustainability in design, especially in experience and interaction design. Ideas, tools, and applications with an eye towards sustainable living are multiplying. I found that I was gathering a sizable cache of resources by my own research, and I hope that by sharing it I can inspire others.

Michael Gomez
Interaction Designer, Austin TX

Wed 11 Jun 02008
Tags: awareness, data, home 2 Comments

A Much Needed Device, Much in Need of Design

Spend any time researching the current field of home energy monitoring products and you're very likely to see mention of the Kill-A-Watt, a device from P3 International. The Kill-A-Watt can read the energy use of an appliance plugged into it, and is marketed as a tool for identifying the ...
Thu 29 May 02008
Tags: Uncategorized No Comments

Mobile App For Greening Daily Trips

Eco2Go, a mobile application concept from engineering students in Canada, generates carbon footprint information by tracking movement throughout the day. The home screen on the Eco2Go prototype shows a Google map with current trip information and the estimated pounds of CO2 since the last carbon offset. Significantly, ...
Fri 23 May 02008
Tags: awareness, home, visualization No Comments

Newspaper coverage of smart electricity in Texas

Houston Chronicle photos Two recent front-page articles in mainstream city newspapers covered the emergence of smart metering in Texas. I think it's a good indication that these technologies and devices are nearing the mainstream here. The Austin American-Statesman covered the installation from the perspective of utility efficiency ...
Tue 6 May 02008
Tags: awareness, home, visualization 3 Comments

Household CO2 Emission Visualizations

Posted by Kyra Edeker The Victoria, Australia government is running an ad pitching conservation by depicting an average household's production of greenhouse gases. Black balloons sprouting from appliances, lamps and electronics each represent 50g of greenhouse emissions. The quiet commercial feels slightly sinister, with the dark balloons sprouting out of the empty house. It's an ...
Sun 13 Apr 02008
Tags: feedback, mpg, visualization No Comments

Tahoe Hybrid Energy Dashboard

This weekend I opened my new issue of The New Yorker (now you've got me pegged) and noticed something interesting about the inside cover ad spread. The most prominent selling point in this Earth Day ad for the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid is the SUV's screen interface.  The caption reads: Visual readout of ...

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