Energy Puppet: An Ambient Awareness Interface for Home Energy Consumption

The Energy Puppet is an ambient display device that provides peripheral awareness of energy consumption for individual home appliances. The display produces different “pet-like” behavioral reactions according to energy use patterns of the appliances to give homeowners an indication of their energy consumption status. The puppet would raise its “arms” in victory to display normal consumption rate, or its “eyes” would change color to red and “roar” to warn the homeowners when the specific appliance reaches dangerously high consumption rates. The assumption is that the awareness of energy consumption could affect how people consume and control energy use in their households. This paper describes the usage scenarios and the design and implementation of Energy Puppet and discusses future research directions.