Combining Persuasive Computing and User Centered Design into an Energy Awareness System for Smart Houses

The environmental impacts of the usage of fossil fuels together with its limited supply has been pushing governments, industries and people to seek cleaner and renewable energy supplies and to adopt energy habits leading to a greater sustainability. While acquiring a Photo Voltaic solar panel (PV) is a big step in that direction, much can also be accomplished with changes in individual and collective energy consumption behavior. Moreover both strategies can be used together. This paper presents a software prototype capable of increasing the awareness of the energy consumption in a smart house and supporting a behavior change towards greener consumption habits. The software was developed following the design science research methodology anchored by the application of User Centered Design and the theories of persuasive computing. The development of the User Interface (UI) was done following several iterations with both end-users and experts. In this work, we focus on the UI elements created in order to apply the concepts from different behavior change support methods and theories, such as Feedback, Gamification, and Social norm into energy savings and efficiency. The result was acclaimed during an expert evaluation and will now be trialed in two different trial neighborhoods.