Global warming and usability

 A researcher at CHI2011 said what can usability do about global warming - an awful lot I said. An article has turned up proving my point. 


There is a good article in Scientific American showing that 

1. If you install a smart meter you don't get any energy savings instantly. 
2. Most people don't know how to change the settings on their smart meter to get any savings at all. 

This is basically a usability problem but the problem for a researcher like me is how to get a paper out about getting it right. 

Strange grumpy observation of the day

There is a nice call up at the moment about Transforming Energy Demand in buildings through digital innovation. 

It sounds all very good and grand but for me it just shows how divorced research is from delivery. For example there is very little work on the design of domestic thermostats. Its just not that glamourous enough research to get funded ( even if someone was willing to do it - I mean you don't get in CHI for that kind of work).  Yet if you wanted to make a big impact quickly with out people campaigning against you then making sure the heating in the house was off when you were out ( i.e can you program your digital thermostat correctly ) would be the biggest use. 

Ruth and I were in conversation - we talked about tools for early stage impact on energy consumption for non domestic buildings. There is a system called BREEM which architects can use to guess the amount of energy there building will have. Did you know there are no BREEM or LEADS energy calculators on the iPhone or iPad. 

Strange omission.