‘Watts in it for me?’ Design Implications for Implementing Effective Energy Interventions in

Organisations

Derek FosterShaun LawsonConor LinehanJamie WardmanMark Blythe

Overview

• Introduction & Background• Organisational Energy Workshops• Grounded Theory• Findings• Future Work

Electro-Magnates is a cutting edge carbon-reducing

sustainability project at the intersection of computer science, social media and behaviour change. The project involves displaying energy

feedback to universities and organisations to encourage positive behaviour change n energy

consumption.

Introduction - Electro Magnates Project

Introduction - Why Organisational Energy?• Large pubic and private sector organisations account

for 10% of UK emissions.• 45% of UK Business energy consumption is by SME’s.• Potential SME energy wastage costing in the region of

£1.1billion by inefficient practices can be tackled through behaviour change and raised awareness of green practices.

• Rising energy costs.• Carbon taxes.

Introduction - Previous Domestic Research • Two unique domestic energy studies delivering

socially mediated live energy feedback inside a Facebook application.

• Work presented here builds on findings of successful energy interventions that utilise social media attributes.

• Wattsup paper Nordichi’10: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/3155/

• Power Ballads paper CHI’11: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/4104/

Closed for snow in 2010 The weekend

Introduction – Employees aren’t just Noise

Workshops

• Workshops included participatory design and focus group methods to engender a user-centred approach in understanding energy consumption in the workplace.

• 3 day-long dashboard and organisational energy workshops run across 3 locations.

• 65 participants took part from 5 universities and a number of organisations, some from the energy sector.

• Job roles of participants included academics, administration, managers, marketing, engineering, librarians, IT support and institutional leaders .

Workshops

Workshops

• Workshop structure comprised:

• Quantitative and qualitative survey

• Energy intervention design challenge in groups

• Data Collection

• Video

• Audio

• Written and design accounts

Workshops

• Design task results formed core data analysis:

• Participants asked to design 12 month intervention

• Adopt technologies of their choosing

• Carried out in groups of 4-5 in 2 hours

• Information given for task reflection:

• Recruitment strategies

• Energy feedback

• Sustaining beyond intervention timescale

Workshops

Grounded Theory

• Why?

• Great for analysing large qualitative data sets

• Developing research hypotheses and direction from little understood domains

• Effectiveness when working with qualitative text or audio data

• Provides a fuller understanding of employee energy use practices

• Gives insight on employee interactions with their organisation

• The ‘theory’ is grounded in the data!

Grounded Theory

• First stage – Open Coding

• 631 codes grouped into 36 categories

• Codes at the granularity of word or sentence level:

“….hide the overall problem with metrics”

“rewards”

“senior management….”

Grounded Theory • Second stage – Axial Coding

OverallResponsibil

ity

Communication

Engagement

Incentives

Openness

LeadershipRole

Visualisation

Grounded Theory

• Final stage – Selective Coding

• Illustrative participant quotes are selected to form a narrative

• ‘Theory’ is developed that brings together the axial code categories

• Central theme selected – ‘Overall Responsibility’

Openness: “why am I doing this who am I doing it for?”

Engagement: “you can kind of reset the challenge by saying look this is atrocious you’ve slipped by 60%, shame on you in a slightly friendly way”.

Findings

• Developed Grounded Theory includes:

• Providing strong leadership and “management buy-in” to ensure all departments and employees are part of the initial outreach as well sustaining engagement long term.

• Promoting trust by ensuring that no part of the organisational structure is exempt.

• Ensuring transparency so that the reasons behind the intervention are clearly and openly communicated.

• Involving employees in setting energy consumption targets

• Negotiating incentives mapped to any energy savings made either at the departmental or organisational level.

Findings

• Contribution

• Transferable theory to design.

• Analysis relevant to HCI.

• Rich account of employee and management perspectives of energy usage practices and how to design effective interventions.

• Design of interventions must address corporate responsibility

• Prototype interface that embeds developed grounded theory.

Findings

Future Work

• Employee Energy Study

• Intervention built around open smart meter infrastructure

• Findings for design implications considered

• Multiple departmental recruitment

• Student Energy Study

• Socially mediated intervention using Facebook app

• Taps into contemporary ‘designing for coolness’

Future Work

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