Stimulating consumers to save water is a challenge and an opportunity for water demand management. Existing ICT systems for behavioural change often do not consider the underlying behavioural determinants in a systematic way. This paper discusses the design of the behavioural change and incentive model combining smart meter data with consumption visualisation and gamified incentive mechanisms to stimulate water saving. We show how the design of such a system can be related to a holistic behavioural change model and how this systematic mapping can inform the design of an integrated incentive model combining different incentive types (virtual, physical, social). The model is implemented in the SmartH2O system and deployed in two pilots. We present the preliminary results for the Swiss pilot, which indicate reduced water consumption, positive user feedback and overall suitability of the designed incentive model.
In a world affected by the constant growth and concentration of the population in urban areas, the problem of preserving natural resources has become a priority. A promising approach to resource conservation is demand management, i.e., the ability to positively influence the behaviour of the population towards more sustainable consumption. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools have shown a great potential in influencing consumers' behaviour, which could be exploited for the common good. However, the design of so-called persuasive systems for environmental purposes is a challenging task, because it cannot be based solely on the utilitarian motivation of users, but must be able to trigger a broader range of engagement factors deeply rooted in the human psychology. In this paper, we review the main design principles and models at the base of a class of persuasive system that exploits gamification and Games with a Purpose (GWAPs) to engage users towards sustainability; we identify the most commonly used incentive mechanisms for inducing behavioural changes; and present a selection of gamified systems for energy and water conservation. From such a survey, we distill design guidelines to be applied in the design of demand management socio-technical systems.
This paper presents the research objectives of the enCOMPASS project, which aims at implementing and validating an integrated socio-technical approach to behavioural change for energy saving. To this end, innovative user-friendly digital tools will be developed to 1) make energy data consumption available and understandable for different types of users and stakeholders (household residents, office employees, school pupils, building managers, utilities, ICT providers) and to 2) empower them to collaborate in order to achieve energy savings and manage their energy needs in efficient, cost-effective and comfort-preserving ways. The project will demonstrate how this can be achieved with a novel approach that integrates user-centered visualisation of energy data from smart sensors and user-generated information with context-aware collaborative recommendations for energy saving, intelligent control and adaptive gamified incentives enabling effective and sustained behavioural change.
a b s t r a c tUser video tagging can enhance the indexing of large collections of videos, or can provide the basis for personalizing output. However, before the benefits of tagging can be reaped, users must be motivated to provide videos with tags. This article describes a two-stage study that aimed at collecting the most important motivations for users to tag video material. First, focus groups with internet users were held to elicit all possible motivations to tag videos on the internet. Next, 125 persons ranked these motivations for two cases via an online survey and responded to statements that assessed their acceptance of personalized output, based on their tags. Motivations related to indexing appear to be far more important for people than motivations related to socializing or communication. Furthermore, people were moderately positive about personalized output, based on their tags. Finally, important user barriers to tagging are discussed.
In this paper, we report on a study that explores the contribution of social tags, professional metadata and automatically generated metadata to the retrieval process. In this study, 194 participants tagged a total of 115 videos, while another 140 participants searched the video collection for answers to eight questions. The results show that in the current context, social tags yield an effective retrieval process, whereas automatically generated metadata do not. To put this result in perspective, participants' search strategies were primarily guided by the search tasks, instead of metadata elements. We have found some evidence that social tagging is effective, as the same terminology was used in the retrieval process as in the process of assigning metadata.
Stimulating households to save energy with behaviour change support systems is a challenge and an opportunity to support efforts towards more sustainable energy consumption. The approaches developed so far, often either; do not consider the underlying behaviour change process in a systematic way, or do not provide a systematic linking of design elements to findings from behaviour change literature and the design of persuasive systems. This paper discusses the design and evaluation of a holistic socio-technical behaviour change system for energy saving that combines insights from behavioural theories and the persuasive system design in a systematic way. The findings from these two streams of research are combined into an integrated socio-technical model for informing the design of a behaviour change system for energy saving, which is then implemented in a concrete system design. The developed system combines smart meter data with interactive visualisations of energy consumption and energy saving impact, gamified incentive mechanisms, energy saving recommendations and attention triggers. The system design distinguishes between a version with non-personalized energy saving tips and a version with personalized recommendations that are deployed and evaluated separately. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation results of the non-personalized system in a real-world pilot. Obtained results indicate reduced energy consumption compared to a control group and a positive change in energy knowledge in the treatment group using the system, as well as positive user feedback about the suitability of the designed system to encourage energy saving.
Abstract-This paper describes the design and development of histoGraph, an interactive tool for explorative visualization and collaborative investigation of historical social networks from multimedia collections. Developed in an interdisciplinary collaboration of computer scientists, historians, HCI researchers and interface designers, the tool aims at supporting historians in the discovery and historical analysis of relationships between people, places and events. A special focus is on the identification and interactive visualization of social relations from historical photo collections through a combination of automatic analysis and expert-based crowdsourcing. The tool design bridges the gap between established network analysis and visualization techniques and traditional hermeneutic research methods in historical research. It integrates visual exploration with hybrid social graph construction, hypothesis formulation and the consultation of digitized primary sources. A formative evaluation of the current prototype, developed as a domainspecific application for historians in the field of European integration points to opportunities and critical factors in applying this approach to support and further current research practices in digital humanities.
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