I recently wrote a paper for the CHI2009 Workshop: Defining the Role of HCI in the Challenges of Sustainability. The paper is entitled Sensing Opportunities for Personalized Feedback Technology to Reduce Consumption (download it here).
Abstract
Most people are unaware of how their daily activities affect the environment. Previous studies have shown that feedback technology is one of the most effective strategies in reducing electricity usage in the home. In this position paper, we expand the notion of feedback systems to a broad range of human behaviors that have an impact on the environment. In particular, we enumerate five areas of consumption: electricity, water, personal transportation, product purchases, and garbage disposal. For each, we outline their effect on the environment and review and propose methods for automatically sensing them to enable new types of feedback systems.
I had two primary goals in mind while writing this paper:
- to inform the reader, particularly HCI practicioners and researchers, about the ways in which environmentally impactful human behaviors can be sensed
- to inspire thinking about ways in which these new types of sensor data may be aggregated, analyzed, and fed back to the individual in order to increase awareness about environmentally impactful activities and motivate sustainable behaviors.
Needless to say, a paper such as this begs the question, even if we can automatically sense human activities that impact the environment, should we? Whenever we talk about sensing and automatic detection, Orwellian fears come to mind. These fears are certainly justified. My hope would be that human behavior data need not go beyond the user’s own device. This does not all together eliminate the problem (e.g., the device could be compromised) but certainly mitigates it. A better question is, perhaps: is sensing/feedback technology an effective strategy in reducing consumption? Prior studies in energy feedback technology have demonstrated that providing information about energy use to residents does often reduce consumption. Will this translate to other domains? What are the most effective ways in providing feedback? Does the feedback have to be persuasive or can it simply be informational? For other questions like these, see the paper.
