EnergyMEter──個人節能的兩階段節能回饋與環境顯示工具

EnergyMEter-A Two-staged Eco-Feedback Ambient Display Tool for Personal Energy Conservation

Eco-feedback is a means to better understand the use of natural resources such as energy and water. Toward the goal of sustainability, eco-feedback has been widely applied in the interactive devices or user interfaces that help enable green, energy-conserving applications. The idea of eco-feedback uses visualization, information and feedback as strategy to reveal users' energy consumption in daily life. In this paper, our aim is to help users create energy conservation strategy as to change their original energy consumption behaviors by providing eco-feedback information and visualization. We have developed an eco-feedback ambient display tool-EnergyMeter system. The EnergyMeter system is implemented with a two-staged ceo-feedback information design, which uses a two-staged visualization and usage cap as the way of visualizing energy consumption information. To carry out the idea in the real environment, the EnergyMeter system consists of a tangible energy visualization interface-EnergyMeter ambient display, and an energy monitor system-Livindex Cloud Service. The prototype is evaluated and discussed in the paper. The evaluation results suggested the future works, including: 1) The needs of dynamic stage switches according to user's energy consumption style, 2) The further feedback mechanism in support of sustaining behavior change, and 3) The situational energy consumption information in support of developing energy conservation strategy. 節能回饋（Eco-feedback）是種能促進對自然資源（如能源和水）的使用有更深一層了解的方法。在朝往永續發展的目標下，節能回饋已被廣泛地應用在互動設備（interactive devices）或使用者界面（user interfaces），以助於綠色及節能應用的實現。節能回饋的概念係使用視覺化、資訊和回饋的策略，以外顯化使用者在日常生活中的能源消耗模式。本研究的目的主要在藉著提供節能回饋資訊和視覺化，來改變使用者原有的能源消耗行為、進而幫助他們產生節能減碳的策略。本研究開發了一個節能回饋的環境顯示工具－－EnergyMEter系統。EnergyMEter系統主要以二階段節能回饋的資訊設計來建置，分別用二階段視覺化與用量上限（two-staged visualization and usage cap）的方法來視覺化能源消耗的資訊。為了在真實場域中驗證這個概念，本研究的EnergyMeter系統是由一實體的能源視覺化界面－－EnergyMeter環境顯示器與一能源監控系統－－Livindex雲端服務所組成。在本研究中，我們對系統的原型進行了評估並討論。本研究未來的研究方向包含：1.依照使用者能源消耗的方式提供動態的階段調整開關（dynamic stage switches），2.更進一步的反饋機制設計來幫助使用者持續的行為改變，及3.藉由各情境下的能源消耗資訊來幫助節能策略的發展。