Combining smart energy meters with social media: Increasing energy awareness using data visualization and persuasive technologies

Motivated by the need to reduce energy consumption and provide consumers with control over energy usage, I wanted to explore how smart energy meters can be combined with social media and data visualization, and utilized to facilitate energy awareness for household consumers. Furthermore, I wanted to explore if the concept of persuasive technology can be used to modify consumer behaviour, by motivating for energy savings and avoiding energy peaks. In order to create a prototype for such an application, similar cases have been studied, and households have been interviewed to discover what is preventing them from consuming less energy. Based on these results a low fidelity prototype of a collaborative competition in social media has been created. Both expert evaluation and usability testing were performed on the prototype. The results indicated that a collaborative competition would be a motivating factor for reducing energy consumption, and the social aspect of the competition seemed to enhance motivation further.