Hi everyone! My name is Brigitte Stegers and I am a master student Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.
I will present our pictorial: “Ecorbis: A Data Sculpture of Environmental Behavior in the Home Context”.
Climate change is one of the most imperative environmental challenges to be tackled today.
Research shows that 72% of carbon emissions are caused by household consumption.
While most people have a basic awareness of the enormous potential impact of climate change
the reality is that only a few people have a detailed understanding of how their own personal activities - including food, transport and energy − impact the climate
One of the challenges is that climate change is intangible
Hence it does not naturally provide direct feedback on how everyday behaviors impact the climate.
Despite the attention, action on climate change has not been there or had little effect, and CO2 emissions continue to rise.
Therefore it is important to translate this abstract and complex topic into personal, tangible, and actionable information.
Our work contributes to three research fields, namely climate change communication, eco-feedback technology, and data sculptures.
The study of Ferreira et al. analyzed 40 recent projects on climate change communication.
This analysis showed majority of Lifestyle interventions focused on communicating climate impact by using generic examples
by for example showing the consequences of activities, such as a rise of the sea level.
Within these studies, there has been no focus on how individual everyday behavior influences climate change.
With the use of eco-feedback technology, awareness can be drawn to everyday behavior and the relative consequences of individual actions.
9 climate change communication projects on other themes focused on communicating information through data visualizations
and only 1 project communicated climate change information by using data.
None of these 16 projects were brought into a personal context.
So introducing the concept of data sculptures in a home context could be an opportunity to show the influence of lifestyle choices on the climate more closely related to this context.
So the core question that we try to answer with our work is:
How can a data sculpture create environmental awareness, in a home context, by communicating the associated carbon emissions of everyday choices?
Firstly, we explored the domain of climate impact by a diary study and an auto-ethnographic study
to gain an in-depth understanding of everyday behavior and the home context.
In the diary study, we discovered that not all activities were performed daily
and that some activities were done for/with the collective household, as you can also see in this graph.
From the literature review and the domain study, we extracted the following design principles.
So, the system can be best designed for family households.
Secondly, The data sculpture should be positioned in a shared space of the family household.
A weekly overview should be provided in an abstract way.
Personal data of the households should be used and communicated.
Design principle 5 says: the artifact should include a social and historical frame of reference.
The data sculpture should allow for peripheral interaction.
And the last design principle says: a novel fact should be implemented.
With the use of the matrices, 50 initial ideas were analyzed using 3 design principles and clarity as a requirement.
Finally, 5 initial ideas showed the most potential and were further explored in the next stage.
We used experience prototyping to inform the visual vocabulary of the data sculpture.
First, we have developed the 5 initial prototypes and analyzed them using four design principles and a user experience requirement.
Prototype 1 showed the most potential and was further explored by developing two new prototypes.
Throughout this process, we gained in-depth insights which formed the foundation for the development of the final concept, Ecorbis.
The system of Ecorbis consists of three design elements:
A smartphone application,
The data sculpture with visualization of the data,
and the printed receipt.
Based on prior work , we present these elements according to three layers of information that together facilitate environmental awareness:
So, personal reflection,
visual vocabulary,
and the frame of reference.
Users contribute their data on everyday behavior in the smartphone application of five different categories:
transport, electricity, water, paper, and drink consumption.
Through closed questions, users report their behavior of 16 data types
and the collected data of everyday behavior is communicated through our data sculpture Ecorbis.
After data is entered in the smartphone application, the transparent disks start rotating to the total climate impact of that week.
The shared physical artifact allows for personal and household reflection.
The last system component is the receipt, which is printed weekly.
The receipt consists of three elements:
the numerical data on weekly environmental behavior of the household,
the average numerical data of comparable households in the Netherlands,
and third, a random numerical fact comparing two activities and/or products.
To investigate how our layered data sculpture, Ecorbis, was perceived by households and how it could create environmental awareness in a home context,
an initial 8-day field study with two families was conducted.
During the study, we gathered data from the start interview, a diary, the application submissions and final group discussions.
Our study shows that a personal data sculpture such as Ecorbis can create awareness on environmental behavior.
However, it did not provide concrete information on the impact of individual activities/products
or further steps for more sustainable behavior, which was also observed in prior research.
Within our study, we found that the numerical data provided an extra understanding of abstract data
and the novel fact helped in making the complex information accessible.
P2 also said: “The facts make it fun. In that case, it is not abstract anymore.”
The findings show that the privacy aspect of visualizing data was not a problem
and that all participants would not mind if visitors understood their data.
We also observed that the carbon footprint for transport is exponentially higher for both households than for the other categories.
Transport overshadowed the other categories in the data sculpture
and as one of the participants mentioned, it influenced the motivation and understanding of the participants.
In addition, our research showed that for creating awareness within a home environment,
it is most effective to present a joint weekly representation as many activities are performed for/by several people.
This household approach also resulted in collective engagement of the participants:
P5 said: “We occasionally said to each other: have you already filled in your data?”
Our study showed that there is a preference towards a physical way of communicating data on environmental behavior as it makes it less easy to ignore and forget.
P7 also said: “I think that when it’s physical that you pay more attention to it because you actually see it.
With a phone you really have to look up information, which you probably will not do.”
However, an insight that emerged during the research is the possible contradiction with the topic of climate change
and the use of a printed receipt in Ecorbis.
On the one hand, the physicality of the printed receipt was positively received
and also served as an object for discussion.
Our study showed promising findings on designing a data sculpture on environmental behavior for the home context.
Although no conclusions can be drawn on long-term effects,
our study provides interesting directions for future research on designing for sustainability.
Future research could for example investigate the impact of an extrinsic motivator on environmental awareness,
the influence of environmental coupling on the sense-making of data,
how long term engagement can be sustained and how long-term use influences environmental awareness,
the implementation of the design principles in different contexts and themes could be investigated,
and it could be investigated how a different social frame of reference could be implemented
so the individual behavior can be placed in a larger political and cultural context.
This brings me to the end of the presentation.
I want to thank you for listening and feel free to contact us if you any questions.