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‘Smart meters’: some thoughts from a design point of view
Here’s my (rather verbose) response to the three most design-related questions in DECC’s smart meter consultation that I mentioned earlier today. Please do get involved in the discussion that Jamie...
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What is demand, really?
In a lot of the debate and discussion about energy, future electricity generation and metering, improved efficiency and influencing consumer behaviour – at least from an engineering perspective – the...
View ArticleUser-centred design for energy efficiency in buildings: TSB competition
The deadline’s fast approaching (mid-day 17th Dec) for the UK Technology Strategy Board‘s ‘User-centred design for energy efficiency in buildings’ competition [PDF] – there’s an introduction from...
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Thoughts on the ‘fun theory’
The ‘Piano Staircase’ from Volkswagen’s thefuntheory.com The Fun Theory (Rolighetsteorin), a competition / campaign / initiative from Volkswagen Sweden – created by DDB Stockholm – has been getting a...
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Some interesting projects (Part 2)
Following on from Part 1, here are a couple more very interesting student projects linking design and behaviour. This time, both involve providing feedback on the impact or costs of everyday behaviours...
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London Design Festival: Greengaged
The London Design Festival always throws up some interesting events, especially involving clever people trying new things in design and sharing their experiences and expertise. This year, the Design...
View ArticleStuff that matters: Unpicking the pyramid
Most things are unnecessary. Most products, most consumption, most politics, most writing, most research, most jobs, most beliefs even, just aren’t useful, for some scope of ‘useful’. I’m sure I’m not...
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Designed environments as learning systems
How much of designing an environment is consciously about influencing how people use it? And how much of that influence is down to users learning what the environment affords them, and acting...
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Heating debate
Central heating systems have interfaces, and many of us interact with them every day, even if only by experiencing their effects. But there’s a lot of room for improvement. They’re systems where...
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What does energy look like? Drawing Energy book now available
Some news from the SusLab project: Last year, Flora Bowden blogged about our investigation of people’s perceptions of ‘energy’–how do people visualise, or think about, what is for the most part an...
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Drawing Energy and Powerchord at the London Design Festival 2014
The latest Powerchord prototype in use.. The London Design Festival is a huge event taking place across London from today (13th) for the next couple of weeks, and we’re proud to say that two of our...
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Introducing The Story Machine: Part 1
Friction in integrating digital storytelling into community activities For some community groups, the use of technology and digital media is built into the work they do–for example, the Wards Corner...
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Introducing Powerchord (Blackbird edition)
Powerchord 1, housed in a Poundland lunchbox. In the video, you see a laptop (~40W) being plugged in, with, from 10 seconds, the Powerchord kicking in with relatively gentle blackbird song. (The...
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Work in progress: Ambient audible energy data
The three instruments you hear here represent the electricity use of three items of office infrastructure – the kettle, a laser printer, and a gang socket for a row of desks – in the Helen Hamlyn...
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Designing with people in sustainability and behaviour change research: DRS...
On 15 June, at the 2014 Design Research Society conference in Umeå, Sweden, we will be running a workshop on Designing with people in sustainability and behaviour change research along with SusLab...
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Guest post at Ethnography Matters
Over at the excellent Ethnography Matters we have an invited guest post about SusLab, explaining the RCA’s work on the project so far through from an ethnographic perspective. From the conclusion: …we...
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Climate Pathways: Exhibition, November 22–23
We’d like to invite you to Climate Pathways, an exhibition of projects from the Imaginaries Lab‘s fall 2019 studio elective at Carnegie Mellon, Research Through Design. Download the catalog of...
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Thinking About Things That Think About How We Think
Cross-posted from the Environments Studio IV blog, Carnegie Mellon School of Design We often hear the phrase ‘intelligent environments’ used to describe spaces in which technology is embedded, in the...
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Environments Studio: Materializing the Invisible
Timelapse of studio, by Jasper Tom In Materializing the Invisible, we considered invisible and intangible phenomena—the systems, constructs, relationships, infrastructures, backends and other...
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Environments Studio: Design, Behavior and Social Interaction
Jasper Tom investigated patterns of people’s behavior in Pittsburgh’s Greyhound Bus Station In this short introductory unit, we looked at ways in which the design of environments, and features within...
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What’s the future of the UK’s energy? 12 February
On Wednesday, 12 February, we’ll be presenting our work on SusLab so far as part of What’s the future of the UK’s energy?, the next event in the RCA’s Sustain talks series, alongside some big names in...
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Home Energy Hackday: the results
On Saturday 9th November, about 35 designers, developers, makers, researchers and other interesting people came together at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre. We had everyone from energy startups to...
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Seeing Things: The projects
Visualising invisible patterns in human behaviours and environmental conditions Go straight to the projects On Friday 1 November, in the Senior Common Room at the Royal College of Art, twenty students...
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Architecture, urbanism, design and behaviour: a brief review
by Dan Lockton Continuing the meta-auto-behaviour-change effort started here, I’m publishing a few extracts from my PhD thesis as I write it up (mostly from the literature review, and before any...
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CarbonCulture blog launch
It’s been quiet here, for reasons which will be explained later, but in the meantime I should mention that CarbonCulture (with whom I’ve been working for the past two years as part of the...
View ArticleMaking it easy
I have a blog post up at Guardian Sustainable Business, looking essentially at what’s been referred to here previously as ‘enabling‘ behaviour change, specifically in the context of sustainability....
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Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 1)
Photo by trancedmoogle. Back in January, I introduced the Design with Intent method on the blog. I’ve been developing this since then, and, suitably tested and refined, it should form the first stage...
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A lengthy debate
Norwich City Council is introducing a system of parking permit charges determined by the length of the vehicle: The move away from flat-fee permits will penalise drivers who own vehicles more than 4.45...
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Do you really need to print that?
This is not difficult to do, once you know how. Of course, it’s not terribly useful, since a) most people don’t read the display on a printer unless an error occurs, or b) you’re only likely to see it...
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Chute the messenger
This is a communal rubbish chute serving a block of flats. The cross-sectional area of the aperture revealed by opening the hatch should be smaller than the cross-sectional area of the chute itself,...
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Design-Behaviour website launched
Loughborough’s Dr Debra Lilley, who has done extensive research into designing for behavioural change, has just launched an excellent new website, Design-Behaviour, which brings together her research...
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Making users more efficient: Design for sustainable behaviour
I’m pleased to say that a paper I wrote earlier this year has been accepted by the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, a new journal based at Loughborough University. The publishers...
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Home-made instant poka-yokes
Update: Also known as Useful Landmines in the 43 Folders world – thanks Pantufla! Mistake-proofing – poka-yoke – can be as simple as encouraging/forcing yourself to do things in a sequence, to avoid...
View Article‘Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen’ Seminar, 17th October – programme...
Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen, mentioned a few days ago, now has a full agenda available [PDF] (thanks Debra) – here are the abstracts: Tang Tang, Loughborough University Creating Sustainable...
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How to fit a normal bulb in a BC3 fitting and save £10 per bulb
Standard 2-pin bayonet cap (left) and 3-pin bayonet cap BC3 (right) fittings compared Summary for mystified international readers: In the UK new houses/flats must, by law, have a number of light...
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Hard to handle
British Rail’s drop-the-window- then-stick-your-hand-outside- to-use-the-handle doors puzzled over by Don Norman in The Design of Everyday Things are still very much around, though often refurbished...
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So long, and thanks for all the rubbish
It cost nothing to put this (trilingual) thank-you message on this litter bin at Helsinki Airport. But does this kind of message – a very simple injunctive norm – have more effect on user behaviour...
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‘Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen’ Seminar, 17th October
Debra Lilley, who runs the very useful Design-Behaviour website, sends details of an interesting forthcoming seminar at Loughborough University: Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen! The 13th...
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A ‘Behaviour Change Barometer’
This is a kind of exploration of some ideas I worked on a while ago as part of my research, and have only just come back to, in order to tidy them up a bit. I’m putting it online as a way – perhaps –...
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The world’s energy meter
One of the presentations I’m really looking forward to at OpenTech 2008 in London is by AMEE, self-described as “The world’s energy meter”: If all the energy data in the world were accessible, what...
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User-Centred Design for Sustainable Behaviour
TU Delft’s Renee Wever and Jasper van Kuijk (who runs the insightful Uselog product usability blog), together with NTNU’s Casper Boks, have produced a very interesting paper, ‘User-Centred Design for...
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The Rebound Effect nicely illustrated
The Rebound Effect is a significant problem in energy policy and sustainable design: if new devices are more energy efficient, will users simply use them more, or leave them on for longer? (A kind of...
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Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 3)
Continued from part 2 This series is looking at what design techniques/mechanisms are applicable to guiding a user to follow a process or path, performing actions in a specified sequence. The...
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Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 4)
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 (coming soon) Continued from part 3 This series is looking at what design techniques/mechanisms are applicable to guiding a user to follow a process or path,...
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Exploiting the desire for order
I met a lot of remarkable people in Finland, and some of them – they know who they are – have given me a lot to think about, in a good way, about lots of aspects of life, psychology and its relation to...
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Lights reminding you to turn things off
Duncan Drennan, who writes the very thoughtful Art of Engineering blog, notes something extremely interesting: standby lights, if they’re annoying/visible enough, can actually motivate users to switch...
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Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 2)
Continued from part 1 These are the suggested mechanisms applicable to User follows process or path, performing actions in a specified sequence – they fall roughly into three ‘approaches’. In this...
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