Climate-smart information design: Visualizing residential electricity use over the Internet

Journal article, 2011

In light of global warming, energy conservation is indispensable. Residential electricity use nevertheless escapes consumers’ notice. Thus feedback is essential, yet households’ access to information is extremely limited. Smart metering makes continuous feedback over the Internet possible, but users perceive existing web tools to be inaccessible and incomprehensible. Hence the aim has been to design a user interface to increase awareness and energy efficiency in households. Ease of access and straightforwardness has been established as key factors and conventional bar charts in combination with colour coding have proved useful in this respect.