Given that SmartGrids focus on the demand-side and are predicated on consumer participation, we propose an innovative user-infrastructure interface for SmartGrids, in which information visualisation for comparative feedback and new affordances for the Smart Meter are integrated within a virtual environment for a Serious Game. Moreover, in the context of a micro-Grid, we seek to encapsulate aspects of selforganisation and support the principles of enduring institutions through the same interface. We give an example to explain how some of the activities (rooms in the virtual environment) can be structured within the context of an electronic institution. In this way, we aim to use the SmartMeter to promote 'assistive awareness', not just for consumer participation, but also for other aspects of user engagement with critical infrastructure, for example as a citizen, as a stakeholder, and as a practitioner.
Involving users is crucial to designing technology successfully, especially for vulnerable users in health and social care, yet detailed descriptions and critical reflections on the co-design process, techniques and methods are rare. This paper introduces the PERCEPT (PERrsona-CEntred Participatory Technology) approach for the co-design process and we analyse and discuss the lessons learned for each step in this process. We applied PERCEPT in a project to develop a smart home toolset that will allow a person living with early stage dementia or Parkinson's to plan, monitor and self-manage his or her life and well-being more effectively. We present a set of personas which were cocreated with people and applied throughout the project in the co-design process. The approach presented in this paper will enable researchers and designers to better engage with target user groups in co-design and point to considerations to be made at each step for vulnerable users.
This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/20190/ Link to published version: http://dx.
AbstractCommunity energy systems, which rely on demand-side self-organisation of energy distribution, can encounter situations in which demand exceeds supply, and unless the community members schedule energy usage by and between themselves, there will be a blackout. This is effectively a collective action dilemma typically modelled as a repeated game and analysed using Game Theory. In this paper, we investigate the situation from an empirical (rather than analytic) perspective using instead a Serious Game. Motivated firstly by Elinor Ostrom's institutional design principles for sustainable common-pool resource management, and secondly by the idea that collective attention is a prerequisite for successful collective action, we present the design and implementation of a Serious Game which both encapsulates (some of) the design principles and promotes collective attention within the game's interface, affordances and interactions. Our experimental results show that as more interface design features which promote collective attention are enabled, then more often successful collective action is observed. These results have, we argue, important implications for Smart Meter design and roll-out programmes, as well as leveraging the active participation of prosumers in innovative operational and management principles for future Smart Grids.
Autonomous and autonomic systems have proved highly effective for self-* management of resource allocation in open, distributed computer systems and networks. The operation of such systems is, not unexpectedly, hidden from human users. The key question is how self-organising mechanisms for commonpool resource management be successfully transferred to resolve corresponding problems in socio-technical systems, i.e. computermediated systems with humans 'in the loop'. We investigate this problem in the context of smart grids for decentralised community energy systems (dCES). We present the design and implementation of a Serious Game, the Social Mpower game, in which players have to distribute energy resources in an economy of scarcity. A socio-technical system to achieve collective action should include collective awareness to enhance the sense of collective responsibility, social networking to promote selforganisation and visualisation of Ostrom's principles. We argue that the integration and encapsulation of all those requirements by Social Mpower will support successful collective action in a dCES.
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