To switch off the coffee-maker or not

Abstract

There are some barriers to reduce energy consumption in shared spaces where many people use common electronic devices (e.g. dilution of responsibility, the trade-off between comfort and necessity, absentmindedness, or the lack of support to foster energy-efficiency). The workplace is a challenging scenario since the economic incentives are not present to increase energy awareness. To tackle some of these issues we have augmented a shared coffee-maker with eco-feedback to turn it into a green ally of the workers. Its design rationale is twofold: Firstly, to make the coffee-maker able to learn its own usage pattern. Secondly, to communicate persuasively and in real-time to users whether it is more efficient to leave the appliance on or off during certain periods of time along the workday. The goal is to explore a human-machine team towards energy efficiency and awareness, i.e. whether giving the initiative to users to decide how to operate the common appliances, but being assisted by them, is a better choice than automation or mere informative eco-feedback.