Our CHI paper “At Home with Agents: Exploring Attitudes Towards Future Smart Energy Infrastructures” got a Best Paper Award.
I presented the work on Tuesday, April 30 at 11am, at CHI in Paris.
Sketching future energy infrastructures
The work presented in the paper is based on whiteboard animations of future energy infrastructures. Nils Jaeger was so kind as to provide us with his artistic skills.
We developed the sketch in three parts. The first part grounds the sketch in the present, the second part forecasts the near future based on policies, trends and anticipated technologes; and the third part envisions a further future that introduces home energy agents to enable a range of smart energy ‘services’.
Trust dilemma
We use these whiteboard animations to explore attitudes towards the portrayed futures with focus groups. We discover a ‘trust dilemma’: people do see the need to ‘do something’ but they fundamentally do not trust the energy companies that provide the infrastructure. We suggest key design principles to address the emerging challenges.
Whiteboard animation
Video shortcuts
0:28 Part I: Grounding in the present
2:08 Part II: Forecasting the near future
4:44 Part III a: Envisioning a farther future (light version)
7:12 Part III b: Envisioning a farther future (dark version)
Note that participants in our focus groups were either shown Part III a or b. The differences in the versions were in the ownership of the home energy agent (resident vs. the power company), the access to the agent-generated data (resident only vs. resident and the power company), usage of the data (personal use only vs. power companies may use it for ‘targeted advertising’), and control and autonomy of the agent (the agent asks user for permission vs. acts autonomously).