The EnergyLife mobile interface incorporates lessons from environmental psychology and feedback intervention to relay information from appliance sensors, offering a gaming environment that rewards users for decreased electricity consumption

People's domestic habits are increasingly being targeted to reduce levels of CO2 emissions. Whereas domestic energy consumption has received a lot of attention with several reported studies on sustainable practices, there are very few studies on workplace practices. Nevertheless, these are considered as having much potential for reducing energy consumption. This article presents the findings from two field studies where two different types of prototypes for visualizing energy use were designed, implemented and evaluated in different types of workplace settings -factories and offices. The studies used design probes to explore how visual feedback for electricity use was interpreted and acted upon by employees in work settings. A striking observation was that it is very difficult to get people to change to more pro-environmental behavior and practices in a workplace environment. The article discusses why this might be the case. ACM Reference Format:Katzeff, C., Broms, L., Jönsson, L., Westholm, U., and Räsänen, M. 2013. Exploring sustainable practices in workplace settings through visualizing electricity consumption.

Increasing our knowledge of how design affects behaviour in the workplace has a large potential for reducing electricity consumption. This would be beneficial for the environment as well as for industry and society at large. In Western society energy use is hidden and for the great mass of consumers its consequences are poorly understood. In order to better understand how we can use design to increase awareness of electricity consumption in everyday life, we will discuss the design of Watt-Lite, a set of three oversized torches projecting real time energy statistics of a factory in the physical environments of its employees. The design of Watt-Lite is meant to explore ways of representing, understanding and interacting with electricity in industrial workspaces. We discuss three design inquiries and their implications for the design of Watt-Lite: the use of tangible statistics; exploratory interaction and transferred connotations.

This paper examines the project Urban Animals andUs as a journey -or foray -into the terrain vague between people and (other) animals with whom we share urban space. Through three design experiments developed around speculative prototypes and co-design tools, we attempt to bring "wild" urban animals like magpies and gulls into contact with the residents of a senior retirement home, to explore what new practices can arise between otherwise unconnected life-worlds. We expand the notion of companion species from philosopher of science Donna Haraway and begin to position the current project within a growing interest in animals in contemporary design research. Through analysis of the design experiments and the subsequent discussion, we argue that a foray into interspecies relations can inform the practical research agenda and help to re-articulate the dominant anthropocentricity of design research.

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