Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
together everyone's efforts can have a great impact on the environment. It has been a
challenge to find ways of educating people to follow better attitudes towards energy
savings. Results show that technology-enabled consumption feedback can promote
awareness and lead to energy savings (Woodruff and Mankoff
2009
) and some
research work and applications have been developed. Power Agent (Bang et al.
2007
)
is a mobile pervasive game for teenagers, designed to influence their everyday
activities and electricity usage patterns in the household. The underlying design idea
is to let players (one for each house) compete in teams (cooperate with their families)
and learn hands-on how to save energy in their homes. Power Explorer (Gustafsson
et al.
2009
), builds on the previous research on Power Agent and uses a similar
technological set-up, but focuses on real-time feedback. The game design teaches the
players about the consumption of their devices and encourages them to adopt good
habits.
To experiment and evaluate how games can entertain people and motivate behav-
ior changes, we followed two approaches with different goals: MAID which aim at
using players' free time in public spaces, such as shopping centers or waiting rooms,
to both motivate and educate them towards home energy saving behaviors; and LEY,
a pervasive-based serious game to help people understand household energy usage
and to persuade them to change negative energy consumption habits. The mechan-
ics of this game are based on real-time domestic energy consumption information,
presenting a collaborative-competitive approach.
4.3.1
MAID
MAID (Motion-based Ambient Interactive Display) (Salvador et al.
2012
) is a game,
deployed on an interactive public ambient display, driven to motivate behavior
changes regarding domestic energy consumption, through a persuasive interface
based on gesture recognition technology. The main objective of MAID is to instruct
(or remind) users about simple procedures to save energy, showing them how easy it
is to have a huge impact on the environment by taking simple actions in their daily
lives. Our approach is based on the assumption that a change in behavior requires
both motivation to act, as well as knowledge of what to do. According to Fogg
(
2009
), behavior changes can be achieved through the conciliation of three main
factors: motivation, ability and trigger. Thus, our design exposes several common
inappropriate behaviors that must be noticed and corrected by the players through a
public display. During the game, players can explore the different rooms of a house,
where they have to find out what is wrong and perform the correct actions to save
energy, using similar gestures to the ones they would use in the real world to achieve
the same goals (Fig.
4.1
). Actions that can be taken to reduce energy consumption
include turning lights off, unplugging standby equipment, as well as replacing tra-
ditional light bulbs with low-energy ones. The objective of the game is to save as
much energy as possible, solving all the situations presented by the different game
scenarios. Each situation is associated with a different electronic equipment that,
when misused, can decrease the home energy efficiency.
