Our Progress So Far

At our current stage of work, we've delved into researching various topics connected to our interests in energy, behavioral nudges, and how people perceive environmental issues. With this initial research, we, aimed to better understand our own behaviors and the impact of various tools on our energy usage. We quickly realized that if a tool isn't user-friendly, even those interested in the topic struggle to keep up, as we did with our personal tracker.

From there, we reached out to members of our community to gain a broader understanding of how different people and designers view our project. We began by distributing a survey to individuals in the Netherlands, UK, and Spain to gauge their thoughts on energy, tracking, and AI. Subsequently, we hosted a collaborative design session with eight other master students to gain insights into our challenges.

Simultaneously with our research, we tackled various micro-challenges to test and develop an idea centered around connecting with one's energy at a building level and fostering a learning process. Over several weeks, we created both an open-sourced, low-cost energy monitor and our energy bot, Dan. While both elements are currently operational, there's still significant development ahead. For more details on the system's current state and functionality, please visit our GitHub Repo.

Finally, we have started to research into how other people would feel using this device and system of tracking energy. We have run a pilot study into the relationship between sending data and gaining insights in a human-like manner. In the coming weeks we will be continuing with this research and creating a better understanding of what other people struggle with.