Beyond Individual Persuasion: Towards a Paradigm Shift in Interactive Visualisation and Sensing for Environmental Change

Lead Research Organisation: University College London
Department Name: UCL Interaction Centre

Abstract

The overarching goal of this project is to innovate the design of interactive visualisations and sensing for environmental change, reorienting them beyond their current use as levers of individual persuasion, towards an extended role as technologies that can link behaviour change and sustainability policy. The link aims to be bidirectional: on one hand helping people in relating existing climate change and energy policies to everyday life; on the other empowering them in influencing and engaging with policy making by generating an enhanced understanding of their own everyday practices. While there is certainly merit in using digital technology interventions to try and persuade individuals to act sustainably, it is also clear that the large-scale changes needed to tackle the climate emergency require policy interventions, beyond promoting individual action. We believe that there is vast untapped potential for digital technology to catalyse engagement with environmental sustainability policies. This project puts forward the ambition to realize such potential, and the vision of transforming the role of digital technology in relation to behaviour change for environmental sustainability.

The work will target in particular practices and policies related to the built environment, in a variety of domestic and non-domestic buildings, and with policy contexts ranging from organization-focused change (e.g. temperature policy in office buildings) to policies focused on increasing the use of renewable energy (e.g. by enabling collective self-consumption of rooftop solar or demand shifting within household or community settings). Such a multi-domain approach is enabled by the involvement of four different user partners, who recognize the relevance of the proposed project and will facilitate research deployments across the private (Fosters + Partners), non-profit (Carbon Coop; Repowering) and higher education (UCL) sectors. Moreover, strategic advice by project partner Arup will further broaden the scope and impact of our work (see also letters of support).

The project will leverage network-connected sensor nodes and displays, generally considered part of the Internet of Things (IoT). The research will follow a user-centred approach, involving the iterative development of robust, fully functional "high fidelity" IoT interactive prototypes and their evaluation in-the-wild through research methods from the social sciences, thanks to the close collaboration of our multi-disciplinary research team.

Moreover, the project puts forward a novel participatory prototyping research approach: by combining ethnographic and user-centred design methodologies we will involve (some of the) participants not only in the design, but also in the technical development of interactive visualization and sensing prototypes. In parallel with more traditional researcher-led user-centred design and prototyping, hands-on workshops (such as 'hackathons') and online engagement activities will play a pivotal role in the research plan strengthening links between community interests and visualization design. These activities will leverage strong existing research relationships with communities along with the abundance of easy to use open source interactive tools and software libraries, and widely available hardware. This approach is designed to actively increase the social and environmental sustainability of the research process: promoting the community ownership of the open source prototypes developed throughout the project will prevent them from becoming unmaintainable e-waste once the research funding ends. Moreover, this approach will also maximize impact. The participatory prototyping activities will target multiple age groups, including teenagers, offering them STEM skills learning opportunities. Our collaboration with community-based partners will help us to reach under-represented groups particularly from BAME communities

Publications

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Panagiotidou G (2023) Supporting Solar Energy Coordination among Communities in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

 
Description The transition to renewable energy is likely to require the creation of growing numbers of energy communities: collectives organized around shared, local renewable resources. Indeed, energy communities are a key focus for governments around the world in support of more sustainable energy practices. Unlike individual households however, the requirements for such communities to share a resource and demand-shift their consumption are still largely unexplored and interactive systems for supporting energy communities to coordinate around renewable energy resources are still lacking. The Beyond Individual Persuasion (BIP) project, so far, addressed this gap through two studies.

First, we designed and deployed a custom sensor energy monitoring kit with 17 households, who subsequently took part in a series of workshops.
Using the sensor kit, households could monitor and contextually annotate their electricity consumption for a period of 5-15 days. For the workshops the participants' energy data and annotations were 'physicalized' (i.e. visualized through physical means) into cardboard blocks so that participants could collectively interact with them to explore coordination strategies. Through this novel research approach, we found that collective demand-shifting has an extended set of considerations including trade-offs related to privacy, flexibility and social cohesion which are core for navigating already delicate neighborly relations.

Second, building on the findings from the first phase, we designed and prototyped "SolarClub", a demand-shifting visualization system that supported households in coordinating their energy usage by booking energy-hungry activities when solar energy was available. We deployed SolarClub with four groups of neighbors (N=15) for a month. SolarClub successfully enabled neighbors to coordinate, even when some of those participating households were less flexible. While participants reported that SolarClub did not foster a feeling of community, it helped them empathize with their neighbors. Our findings demonstrate the potential of sensor- and visualization-based technology to help understand the relation between everyday practices and resources consumption, beyond individual eco-feedback.
Exploitation Route Through these studies the BIP project is helping to identify energy as a collective issue that demands collective action, moving beyond individual energy consumption behavior, as per the grant initial aim. Accordingly, our findings contribute to the development of a next generation of Internet of Things and interactive visualization technologies that can support collective action for environmental sustainability. This work thus contributes to the development of a next generation of practices and technologies that support collective action for environmental sustainability.
Sectors Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Energy

 
Description Energy Demand Research Centre (EDRC)
Amount £15,507,720 (GBP)
Funding ID EP/Y010078/1 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 06/2023 
End 06/2028
 
Description REGeneration: An Ethnographic Study of Energy, Data and Social Change in Net-Zero Britain
Amount £592,382 (GBP)
Funding ID ES/X008142/1 
Organisation Economic and Social Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 09/2023 
End 03/2026
 
Title Dataset for "SolarClub: Supporting Renewable Energy Communities through an Interactive Coordination System
Description This dataset provides 1) participant interview transcripts and 2) participant household electricity usage sensor data for the corresponding paper and presentation in the upcoming CHI 2024 conference. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2024 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://rdr.ucl.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Dataset_for_i_SolarClub_Supporting_Renewable_Energy_Communiti...
 
Title Dataset for "SolarClub: Supporting Renewable Energy Communities through an Interactive Coordination System
Description This dataset provides 1) participant interview transcripts and 2) participant household electricity usage sensor data for the corresponding paper and presentation in the upcoming CHI 2024 conference. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2024 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://rdr.ucl.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Dataset_for_i_SolarClub_Supporting_Renewable_Energy_Communiti...
 
Title Embellishments Revisited: Perceptions of Embellished Visualisations Through the Viewer's Lens 
Description The material provided here is relevant to the paper titled: "Embellishments Revisited: Perceptions of Embellished Visualisations Through the Viewer's Lens". The folder includes all the stimuli used in the study and how to replicate them, ranking data from the interview study, and rating data from the follow-up study. We also include the code in which we check the screen size to ensure visualisation resolution. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://rdr.ucl.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Embellishments_Revisited_Perceptions_of_Embellished_Visualisa...
 
Title Embellishments Revisited: Perceptions of Embellished Visualisations Through the Viewer's Lens 
Description The material provided here is relevant to the paper titled: "Embellishments Revisited: Perceptions of Embellished Visualisations Through the Viewer's Lens". The folder includes all the stimuli used in the study and how to replicate them, ranking data from the interview study, and rating data from the follow-up study. We also include the code in which we check the screen size to ensure visualisation resolution. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://rdr.ucl.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Embellishments_Revisited_Perceptions_of_Embellished_Visualisa...
 
Description Advisory Board 1 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact 5 experts from industry across the UK and Germany, plus two academics from other UK institutions joined the first advisory panel for the project. The panel members provided feedback on the current research and our plans for the next steps. The industry experts expressed interest in collaborating, and we are following up on opportunities.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description H Knox University of Cambridge departmental seminar 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Presented interim findings from the project at a weekly departmental seminar in anthropology to a mixed audience of academics and postgraduate students
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description H Knox University of Manchester departmental seminar 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact presented interim findings from the project at a weekly departmental seminar in anthropology to a mixed audience of academics and postgraduate students
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Keynote lecture at Nordic STS conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact The talk was part of a keynote session on democratising data to a mixed audience of academics and postgraduate students.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.sv.uio.no/tik/english/research/news-and-events/events/conferences/2023/nordic-sts/plenar...
 
Description Presentation at London Conference in Critical Thought 2023 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Talk + discussion at interdisciplinary conference to an audience primarily of artists, architects and social scientists on a panel on data and the environment.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://static1.squarespace.com/static/64468fe2aea4fc6800606b62/t/6495bc934de0b300de56d5ac/168753474...
 
Description Presentation at the Energy & Society conference in Trento (ITA) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Presentation to approximately 40 researchers, prompting questions and follow-up discussions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://webmagazine.unitn.it/en/evento/sociologia/114453/energy-environment-and-societies-in-crises
 
Description Research group seminar of Research[x]Design group in KU Leuven 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Research group seminar of Research[x]Design group in KU Leuven
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description VIII Jornadas INTERNACIONALES de Comunicación Digital | Ciberimaginario in Madrid (SPA) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Approx. 50 students and professors participated in the conference on Futures Studies and Theories and engaged by asking questions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://ciberimaginario.es/project/viii-jornadas-de-comunicacion-digital/