SusLab Home Energy Hackday, Dana Centre, Science Museum, London SW7 5HD
Saturday 9 November, 8.30am – 8.30pm
Are you interested in energy, design, prototyping or user research? As part of the European SusLab project, we’re running a one-day hackday event to explore new ways of making home energy use more tangible, visible, or understandable, and we’d love you to take part. We’re looking for makers, however you define: hackers, coders, designers, artists, systems people, to come together and push this area forward.
There’s loads of work going on about reducing energy use, feedback, behaviour change and smart metering, but a lot of it misses a fairly basic insight: people don’t understand energy very well, and it’s difficult to change what you’re doing if the feedback doesn’t mean much to you.
From user research with a diverse group of householders, we’ve found that two of the biggest problems are that energy is ‘invisible’, and the units are conceptually difficult for many people. Equally, it’s clear that people are not setting out to ‘use energy’ — they’re meeting everyday needs for family comfort, cleaning, food, entertainment and so on. And lots of energy feedback systems don’t really reflect this.
So, our group of householders (you’ll get to meet some of them on the day) have collectively set a brief:
Build something that helps me understand my home energy use better, by making it more tangible, visible, audible, relatable in some way…. It should ideally also be directly useful or actionable – not just giving me data, but solving an actual problem: e.g. helping me know whether I’ve left things switched on, or helping me know whether what I’m spending is more than I should be.
We’d like you to tackle / explore / challenge that brief, bringing your range of skills to bear in whatever way you see fit. Electricity and gas use are both in scope, together with other relevant variables – temperature (indoor and outdoor), occupancy, anything you feel is relevant.
You could make something physical, or digital, or (most likely) both, a product, a service, combining off-the-shelf bits in new ways, or doing something from scratch. Maybe you already have a project that you think is relevant or could be adapted, or maybe you have an idea and would like to find like-minded people to help you develop it.
What you build will potentially be tested in people’s homes, and in the Institute for Sustainability‘s Living Lab test house on the London Sustainable Industries Park in Dagenham early next year, and there will be the opportunity to develop your ideas further.
We’ll provide food and drink throughout the day, and there will be prizes. You’ll also get to meet and work with some lovely people — with lots of different skills and expertise. We’ll also provide some equipment (this list will be added to over the next couple of weeks!), but please do bring your own too (and add it to the list, if you like).
Please do sign up at Eventbrite, and let people know you’re coming! It’s a relatively small, quick, one-day event, but if you miss out, there should be more opportunities as the project progresses.
Any questions, comments, suggestions or ideas – please comment below or get in touch – dan.lockton@rca.ac.uk or flora.bowden@rca.ac.uk