Energy has recently dominated the news, with headlines
proclaiming that household
costs (as well as company
profits) are on the increase. Overshadowed
in this discussion are the environmental impacts: over a quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions
come from a domestic context, primarily through energy use. Over the past decade, the field of HCI
(human-computer interaction) has become increasingly concerned with issues of
sustainability, and a number of researchers have chosen to focus on energy
reduction strategies. Many of these
efforts have resulted in technology that aims to persuade the user to use less
gas and electricity by providing them with personalised information, whether in
the form of facts and figures (e.g. home
energy portals) or through ambient displays like the Power
Aware cord.
However, there is one method of reducing home energy use
that has received little attention: retrofitting. Installing measures such as double glazing, wall
insulation, or a more efficient boiler can not only reduce carbon emissions, it
can also reduce a household’s energy bills and make it more comfortable to live
in. Yet unlike the incremental behavioural
changes tackled by persuasive technology, retrofitting is a one-time
intervention in which the focus of energy saving shifts from an individual’s
behaviour to the physical fabric of the building itself. As a result, it sits at the curious
intersection of sustainability through product consumption, requiring present
expenditure for future monetary savings, and trades current disruption and
inconvenience for the hope of future thermal comfort. Retrofitting is further complicated by its
very nature: there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Enter the community
initiative Bristol Green Doors. Founded in 2010, the organisation runs an
eco-homes open house event approximately every 18 months. Householders who have already installed
retrofitting measures open their opens to the public to share their experience,
the pros and cons of different measures, the benefits that the retrofitting has
brought, or what they wish they had done differently. This allows those who are interested in
retrofitting to see the measures in action and learn more from trusted sources:
their own neighbours.
Yet measuring the impact of such an event is
difficult. Anecdotally, there were
indications that visitors would be inspired by the open weekend to contact local
companies who provided retrofitting services, but no easy way of directly
tracking activity back to the event. Without
this quantitative data, it is difficult for Bristol Green Doors to secure additional
sponsors and become self supporting. Dr. Chris
Preist’s involvement as a Bristol Green Doors householder helped him
identify that technology could play a role in bridging this gap, and a
successful funding application allowed the Digital Green Doors project to
proceed.
A series of
brainstorming sessions were held with key stakeholders to determine what
features would be most useful to both Bristol Green Doors visitors and to the
organisation itself. A number of
intriguing ideas were put forward, with several chosen to be made into a
smartphone application. The Greendoors app
was developed by researcher Daniel Schien
around a basic mapping application that shows the location of the participating
Bristol Green Doors houses. Users can
then delve further into the houses to learn what features each has installed,
take notes on the individual houses, and some householders have agreed to be
contacted by email after the event. This
allows visitors to get questions answered beyond the weekend itself. Other features include being able to filter
houses by measure and save houses to a shortlist, e.g. showing just the houses
that the user plans to visit.
The final feature of
the app is a QR code scanner, which the Digital Green Doors team has chosen to
deploy in an unusual way. QR codes are
the square barcodes that have proliferated on advertisements and products. QR typically stands for Quick Response, with
a user scanning a code and their smartphone immediately linking to a website or
displaying the encoded information.
However, in this case it’s a matter of “delayed response”. A specific QR code was produced for each retrofitting
measure in each Bristol Green Door house, and when scanned by the app it is
saved to the user’s account. This is
then used to produce a personalised report of information about the measures
the user is interested in, grouped by measure type to allow for easy
comparison. The report is in emailed to
the user after the event. In addition to
providing a numeric view of each measure (i.e. the cost and the level of
disruption as rated by the householder), the householders also share a few
words of advice, such as this blurb about loft insulation:
“This
measure is cheap yet effective. Do spend
the extra and use environmentally friendly insulation such as sheeps wool.
Double up rafters to board out afterwards. We have topped this up further
ourselves -- very simple so long as you follow the guidelines about leaving
ventilation space at the eaves.”
The suppliers, products, and general sites of interest
contained within the report are all hyperlinked. The purpose of this is two-fold. First, it intends to assist the user by
giving them the information they want in one place, making it easier for them
to conduct research about the measures they wish to install. It is hoped that this will help turn
intention to retrofit into action.
Second, by allowing basic tracking to occur via click throughs, it
allows the initial goal of the project to be fulfilled by directly measuring interest
that has occurred as a result of the event.
While it cannot yet determine whether a user has gone ahead with the
purchase of a retrofitting measure, it is a step towards helping Bristol Green
Doors become self supporting. For the Digital
Green Doors team, it allows research to be carried out on
a novel way of using QR codes, and also allows retrofitting to be introduced to
within the discipline of HCI by showing how it is possible to move beyond
persuasion and behaviour change.
 |
| IKEA solar panels. Image from Witchdoctor.co.nz |
It is too early to report on the effect of the app and
the reports, but the initial responses have been positive. This is encouraging news as it will allow the
Greendoors app to be used at other eco-homes events in the future, with the
possibility of a nationwide rollout. With
IKEA selling solar panels and now an app designed
around retrofitting, it is hoped that the process of retrofitting, and its
associated carbon reduction, will become more mainstream.
This blog is written by Dr Elaine Massung, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, University of Bristol.
 |
| Dr Elaine Massung |