Ecorbis: A Data Sculpture of Environmental Behavior in the Home Context

Abstract

We are in the middle of a climate crisis. Never before has the impact of climate change been this visible, problematic, and timely. While most people have a basic awareness of the enormous potential impact of climate change, the reality is that only a few people have a detailed understanding of how their own (combined) personal activities − including food, transport, energy − impact the climate. In this pictorial, we explore the design process and principles of a data sculpture − Ecorbis − that is designed to help people reflect on how their day-to-day activities translate to climate impact. Ecorbis provides abstract and numerical weekly feedback on the overall environmental behavior of households and allows for in situ reflection and comparison. We conducted an initial 8-day field study with two families that highlighted that Ecorbis raised environmental awareness on climate impact and that the layered design of Ecorbis facilitated reflection.

Validating Design Choices of a Bio-Inspired Histogram to Support a Shared Practice of Clean Energy at the Workplace

“…Le système propose une compétition entre deux équipes : présentation du gagnant sur les treize dernières heures sur l'histo-tree, de la comparaison sur les neuf dernières semaines et de la comparaison avec la consommation sur la même période l'année passée. Également, Ecorbis [50] est une sculpture qui, associée à une application, permet de visualiser l'impact du comportement sur l'environnement dans le cadre du foyer familial.…”

“…Les interfaces comme Tiree Energy Pulse [48], The Box [24], Ecorbis [50] ou Local Energy Indicator [36], n'utilisent pas de symbolique énergétique ou environnementale particulière mais présentent les quantités ou la disponibilité d'énergie renouvelable ou non renouvelable. Certains systèmes utilisent une symbolique énergétique.…”

“…(4) Notification périphérique : En exploitant les interactions périphériques, le système tangible permet aux utilisateurs de mener plusieurs tâches à la fois et d'interagir de manière spontanées avec le système [44,50]. Comme l'ont montré Daniel et al [11], le mouvement de l'interface tangible à changement de forme permet de notifier les utilisateurs sans les déranger.…”

From Exploration to End of Life: Unpacking Sustainability in Physicalization Practices

“…SDP has emerged from the recent interest of the Data Physicalization community in making environmental sustainability a focus of research, practice and teaching. We consider SDP as a broad discipline that encompasses research focusing on using data physicalization to raise awareness about environmental issues (e.g., [52,68,70,79]) as well as research that advocates for sustainability within the physicalization practice (e.g., [9,39,45,51]). Similar to Sustainable HCI, this discipline seeks to understand and deal with the impact of technology on the environment.…”

Understanding Household Consumption Practices and their Motivations: Opportunities to Foster Sustainability Practices

“…In addition, eco-feedback technologies have been designed to provide feedback on resource consumption with the goal of reducing environmental impact [8,80] including in-house displays (IHD) [108], web-based apps / mobile applications [51], games [107], thermal imaging [92], virtual environments [59], tangible user interfaces [52], and data sculptures [91,95]. However, most of these interventions have several limitations including the demand for visual attention which can be disruptive as it draws the focus of a person away from the task at hand [63,113] and detachment from the physical environment [48].…”