EnergyPULSE: tracking sustainable behavior in office environments

Energy consumption behavior has become a hot topic in ICT research communities. Being subject to research in the fields of behavioral and environmental psychology for more than 30 years, it is now also in the focus of ICT communities like human-computer interaction (HCI) or ubiquitous computing (UbiComp). Huge efforts are being put into investigating the use of ICT to raise peoples' energy awareness. Most of the research is on private households while only little attention is paid to office environments. However, most working people spend one third of a day working in an office. Therefore, we believe it makes sense to investigate the energy consumption behavior of people and find ways to increase energy efficiency in office environments. In this paper we present a ubiquitous sensor-based system for tracking user actions relevant for sustainable behavior. We go beyond existing energy consumption metering systems by tracking power consumption as well as presence and user interactions with lighting, heating, and windows. Further, we discuss the results of three accompanying participatory user workshops to explore the possibilities and problems of such a system in office environments.

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