The start page also features an advert with the tongue-in-cheek notion of “painting” with the PowerMeter.

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Yet another energy awareness savvy article appears this weekend in the New York Times.  It discusses the powerful motivator of friendly competition to modify energy use behavior.  When people have a notion of normal behavior, they tend to change what they do.

Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist at Arizona State University, studies how to get Americans — even those who did not care about the environment — to lower energy consumption. And while there are many ways, Dr. Cialdini said, few are as effective as comparing people with their peers.

In a 2004 experiment, he and a colleague left different messages on doorknobs in a middle-class neighborhood north of San Diego. One type urged the residents to conserve energy to save the earth for future generations; another emphasized financial savings. But the only kind of message to have any significant effect, Dr. Cialdini said, was one that said neighbors had already taken steps to curb their energy use.

“It is fundamental and primitive,” said Dr. Cialdini, who owns a stake in Positive Energy. “The mere perception of the normal behavior of those around us is very powerful.”

A couple of programs mentioned in the article:

BrainShift Foundation Energy Smackdown

Central College PODS Dorm

Quality Attributes Software Green Touchsreen used on the PODS Dorm

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Visual readout of the navigation radio displays whatever power mode you are currently in: engine idle, engine power, hybrid power, regenerative braking, or battery power.

It sounds a little bit like the Energy Monitor screen on the Prius.  It shares the screen with sound system controls (AM/FM/XM Radio, CD, Aux), each accessible in different tabs.  

It’s notable that the screen is nowhere touted (that I can find) on the Chevy Hybrid website, but it’s the one feature visually called out (besides the vehicle itself, looking serene among the Redwoods) in the ad.   

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall as the marketers made their decisions about this ad.   I wonder why Earth Day brings this interface to the fore in its campaign, while it’s not really a part of the “standard” sell.     

How does the “visual readout” appeal to someone looking for Earth-friendly solutions this week, rather than any other week?  How does this type of interface function as a selling point for some audiences, and not for others?

Things are a little slow around here as I’m vacationing before beginning a new position at a design agency here in Austin.  Posting will be pretty low-key until I get settled back in to a work routine.  

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The downside of all that travel, of course, isn’t just an achey back, but a whole lot of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The beauty of Dopplr’s plans to integrate carbon calculation is that a user’s motivation to use the system — keeping in touch with colleagues — ostensibly has little to do with creating data about energy or emissions. The designers of the system made a value judgement, and added a new dimension to what Dopplr can be for its users.

It looks like there will be a graphical element to show cumulative as well as cyclical patterns, and an added social dimension, by way of sharing your carbon details with others. I’m looking forward to getting a closer look at this when it’s made public.

*I’d like to recommend Tom Raftery’s blog, where he’s covering a lot of fantastic issues, especially in relation to computing and climate change. Just this week he’s written on Microsoft’s new initiative in the energy efficiency market, and on carbon accounting software. I first spoke with Tom last November during the Web 2.o Conference in Berlin, where he gave a keynote on Reducing Carbon Footprint. He’s been involved in creating a hyper-efficient data center, and has a lot of expertise in the green computing realm.

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Dan Lockton writes about the Orb on his blog, Architectures of Control: Design with Intent:

Recent design graduate Harry Ward’s Orb energy monitor is especially attractive: a toroidal inductor is clipped around the cable being measured, and transmits data wirelessly to the Orb itself, a hand-held unit which glows different colours depending on the power being drawn. The display on the Orb could show the user the direct electricity cost and CO₂ emissions equivalent, as well as the actual power being used and cumulative energy (kWh) used over a period.

In an email, Ward described the key principle in his design: it was to be a “a real-time energy monitor that made the concept of ‘energy monitoring’ simple and understandable.”

There are several levels to the monitoring: “First, ‘at-a-glance,’ whereby the consumer can instantly understand what is happening, by a coloured glow. Next, digital figures are available to justify the glow. Finally, the product has a self-learning feature, that uses historical consumption data to provide comparison for the user.”

I asked Ward why he felt that a product like this is important, and he replied, “I felt, as I do now, that as energy prices rise and the pressure to reduce CO2 emissions increases we will need to be able to look at what we use and when – at the point of consumption (ie not in a bill 3 months later!).”

Developed originally as part of a final-year product design project for his degree, the end product may differ from what we’ve seen thus far. So, consider the product we are seeing here a preview of a perfected design we’ll see later on.

Ward wrote that during the process of design, he “did prototyping whilst developing the product at the workshop that was available at my University. Its a very useful process that I would say is essential to ensure the product design is achievable on a production level. The orb, as it displayed in Dan Lockton’s website, is the creation from my degree after various attempts at different designs. I settled on the tactile shape to encourage the user to use the product around the home. Since then, the product has had many other embodiments.”

The design is being finalized now, and plans are underway to get the Orb into production in the next year. I’ll keep you posted.

Photo courtesy of Harry Ward

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First, a Prius enthusiast named John put together a breakdown of the different states of the “Energy Monitor” screen, with side-by-side comparison of the latest design with an earlier one. The Energy Monitor displays how the energy systems in the Prius are using and generating energy. This screen toggles with the “Consumption” screen I showed earlier.

Next, a picture-in-picture video showing a three-minute ride in a Prius. It shows the driver’s feet using the pedals alongside the dashboard display in real-time. It shows both the Consumption screen and the Energy Monitor. It’s especially cool to see this kind of coupling of the display with the user’s behavior. You can see pretty clearly how MPG responds to braking and accelerating.

Last, a video that shows how people are using the Prius dashboard to achieve efficiencies far exceeding the estimates for a Prius, with a technique called “hypermiling.” Feedback from the Energy Monitor is used to achieve a coasting glide that uses very little energy. I love this video because it’s a good example of how an interface can make saving energy fun and even competitive.

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But it’s not invisible. For one thing, we get that bill every month.

We see how much energy we used when we get that bill, and how much it cost, but it’s not enough. We need to know how we’re using energy moment by moment. We need to know how much it’s costing, right now. We need immediate and simple feedback, like we get from a speedometer: we need to know how fast we’re going, and we need to know when to slow down. A monthly electric bill can’t do that.

On the dashboard of most hybrid cars there’s an example of the kind of feedback we need – real-time display of miles-per-gallon (or KM/L). Up until recently, most gauges on the dash were there because “driving blind” would put us needlessly in danger of breakdowns or traffic tickets. But because the dangers of overconsumption are no less real, we’re beginning to see a new kind of design that’s going to change the way we use our energy, by making our energy use visible.

An interesting thing about the MPG display is that it’s not coming from new data; it was there all along. We could always calculate our fuel efficiency, except that it was a little like those monthly electric and heating bills. We can get a very broad idea of our energy use, but we can’t connect it to what we’re doing very well. When we receive instant feedback, we’ll start connecting our experiences with the energy we’re using.

Prius energy consumption dashboard (Creative Commons photo by geognerd on Flickr)

One thing that strikes me about the Honda Prius energy dashboard, though, is that it’s not very clear, at least at first. There’s a lot on the screen, and since I don’t drive one, I don’t know how it responds in real-time, while driving. My best guess is that the dashboard pictured is showing one trip that’s lasted 25 minutes. After about 15 minutes the driving conditions changed, and fuel efficiency dropped. Even if that’s right, I don’t see why the minutes are plotted from right to left. Convention usually has an x-axis moving from left to right.

If a Prius owner comes along, I’d love to hear an explanation of what this stuff means, and what they think of it.

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