The course will be articulated this year around a series of application exercises focussing household behaviour change to reduce domestic energy consumption.

These exercises called TALKING WITH MY ENERGY METER… will build on the outputs of the European H2020 research project NATCONSUMERS whose aim is to develop an advanced and integral user-centred framework for the implementation of efficient energy feedback programmes in the domestic area.

The approach of NATCONSUMERS project relies on the complete characterisation of EU energy consumers and the design of specific personalised feedback processes tailored to each consumer pattern detected based on the use of natural language and emotional contents. Understanding user needs and adapting to their requirements and expectations are the most appropriate mechanisms for increasing the engagement of citizens in more sustainable energy consumption habits.

The design exercises conducted at La Cambre are aiming at developing illustrated scenarios showing promising instantiations of energy feedback solutions in domestic environments. The design exercise will also contribute as an external pilot to the NATCONSUMERS project. Scenarios produced by the students will be presented to the NATCONSUMERS consortium in Spring 2016 and travel & accommodation to take part to the creative design workshop to be hold in London in Fall 2016 will be offered by the project to 2 La Cambre students having proposed the best scenario inputs.

MAIN STEPS OF THE DESIGN EXERCISE JOURNEY…

Design ex. #1 _ Investigating the factors influencing households energy use behaviours…

Students will investigate an household of their choice (relatives, friends) with a simple questionnaires and feedback their findings during a collective workshop exploring factors influencing households energy use behaviours.

Design ex. #2 _ Exploring the natural language feedback instantiations…

Students in pairs will be presented the principles of natural language feedback based on contextual analysis of household smart meter data. Starting from the different households they investigated, the students will then imagine narratives describing feedback processes (including context, display and message) likely to influence positively energy usage behaviours. All the narratives generated will be shared and clustered during a second collective workshop.

Design ex. #3 _ Designing promising scenarios…

Students will discuss the most promising clusters of solutions and develop them into coherent products services systems proposals. Each proposal will be presented through a slide presentation of the scenario explaining the starting hypothesis in terms of household behaviour change (1 slide), presenting the product-service system (2-3 slides) and how it works and illustrating its use in 3 different households’ contexts (3 slides).