Full Presentation Panel
Western society is largely alienated from the sources and processes by which energy is secured for our sustenance, not to mention the environmental impacts of our behavior. The field of eco-feedback has emerged to address this concern, aiming to teach and motivate us to consume responsibly. The Consumer Energy Interface Lab at University of California, Davis, is composed of a highly interdisciplinary team of experts in behavior, engineering, design, and computer science, who are investigating how eco-feedback can be harnessed to overcome the tragedy of the commons, a challenge that permeates the quest for sustainability. Through creative visualizations of personal, social, and environmental impacts of community-level practices, we seek to promote a culture that recognizes, and operates according to, interdependencies between individual, community, and environment. This panel presents several of our projects, from digital energy dashboards with a twist and an app that empowers campus occupants to choose to improve HVAC efficiency, to tangible interfaces that cross the digital divide, including physical displays embedded in the environment to keep a zero-net energy community on track and an interactive art installation that engages citizens in stories of local and global energy processes.
Campus Eco-Feedback Systems
SESEME: A Social Energy Sensing Monument
Practice What You Preach: Eco-feedback for Energy Researchers