Visualization Support for Comparing Energy Consumption Data

Providing effective feedback can empower users to change their behaviour and take the necessary actions to reduce their energy consumption. The types of feedback that allow comparison of energy usage seem to be particularly valuable. This paper introduces the time-stack visualization, which has been designed to support comparisons of individual and collective energy usage data. It also describes a user study conducted to compare the effectiveness of time-stack against a similar visualization called time-pie. The results show that although the two visualizations are generally comparable in their effectiveness, users rate time-stack more favourably.