Thermostat Interface and Usability: A Survey

Meier, Alan

doi:10.2172/1004198

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Curiously, the thermostat, that is, the control of the heating and cooling system, has received relatively less attention. A survey of the literature broadly dealing with thermostats was recently undertaken by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [8].…”

Section: Earlier Studies Of Thermostat Usability In the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Usability of residential thermostats: Preliminary investigations

Meier

Aragón

Peffer

et al. 2011

Building and Environment

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Section: Earlier Studies Of Thermostat Usability In the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Usability of residential thermostats: Preliminary investigations

Meier

Aragón

Peffer

et al. 2011

Building and Environment

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“…In Genie, we prominently display the essential HVAC information such as measured temperature, temperature setpoint and HVAC operation status. We also show weather and historical information, which occupants find useful [29].…”

Section: User Interface Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, thermostat use can have a significant impact on HVAC energy, but is often ignored by FM. Meier et al [29] study various residential thermostat designs and confirm that a poor user interface (UI) and occupants' misconceptions have a significant impact on comfort and HVAC energy. Karjalainen et al [27] find similar problems in office spaces as well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genie

Koh

Weibel

Agarwal

2016

Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

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Thermostats are the primary interface for occupants of office buildings to express their thermal comfort preferences. However, traditional thermostats are often ineffective due to physical inaccessibility, lack of information or limited responsiveness, which lead to occupant discomfort. Modern thermostat designs do overcome some of these limitations, but retrofitting them to existing buildings is prohibitively expensive. Software thermostats based on web or smartphone apps provide an alternate interaction mechanism with minimal deployment cost. However, their usage and effectiveness have not been studied extensively in real settings. We present Genie, a novel software thermostat that we designed and deployed in our university for over 21 months. We compare the use of Genie to traditional thermostats. Our data and user study show that due to the clarity of information and wider thermal control provided by Genie, users feel more comfortable in their offices. Furthermore, the improved comfort did not affect the overall energy consumption or lead to misuse of HVAC controls.

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“…the households reporting having a programmable thermostat dropped by nearly half compared to the question "do you have a programmable thermostat?" [41,42].…”

Section: Programmable Vs Manual Thermostatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy efficiency and the misuse of programmable thermostats: The effectiveness of crowdsourcing for understanding household behavior

Pritoni

Meier

Aragón

et al. 2015

Energy Research & Social Science

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Programmable thermostats are generally sold as energy-saving devices controlling heating and cooling systems, but can lead to energy waste when not operated as designed by the manufacturers. We utilized Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing service, to investigate thermostat settings and behavior in households. We posted a survey and paid respondents to upload pictures of their thermostats to verify self-reported data. About 40% of programmable thermostat owners did not use programming features and 33% had programming features overridden. Respondents demonstrated numerous misconceptions about how thermostats control home energy use. Moreover, we found that 57% of households were occupied nearly all the time, limiting the potential energy savings. The study revealed flaws in self-reported data, when collected solely from traditional surveys, which raises concerns about the validity of current thermostat-related research using such data. "Ground truth" temperature data could now be available in homes with Internet-connected thermostats. Online crowdsourcing platforms emerge as valuable tools for collecting information that would be difficult or expensive to obtain through other means. Advantages over traditional surveys include low-cost, rapid design-implementation-result cycle, access to diverse population, use of multimedia. Crowdsourcing is more effective than alternative online tools due to easier recruitment process and respondents' reputation system. HIGHLIGHTS  Crowdsourcing services was used to study how people use thermostats  Crowdsourced data was verified by comparing self-reported data with uploaded photos  This procedure revealed inconsistencies and misconceptions in thermostat usage  One third of programmable thermostat owners had programming features disabled  Online crowdsourcing is a valuable tool for collecting energy usage data in homes

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Thermostat Interface and Usability: A Survey

Cited by 13 publications

References 34 publications

Usability of residential thermostats: Preliminary investigations

Usability of residential thermostats: Preliminary investigations

Genie

Energy efficiency and the misuse of programmable thermostats: The effectiveness of crowdsourcing for understanding household behavior

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