Several prototypes were developed in collaboration with Karthikeya Acharya, and central to the topic of his PhD thesis ‘Opening the Electrome’, for the purpose of researching the aspects of the resource usage in individual consumers’ daily lives. The aim was to help users estimate and discuss the amount of resources they waste, and give them feedback on their use. Several prototypes were built over the years, typically used to acquire resource consumption data from users, and either map it for design artefacts for public display [1], or for an individual display through artefacts at home [2]. Feedback on the consumption of users was also explored through mobile devices [3] [4]. The functional prototypes were used to gain an understanding of the usage, as well as to create interventions for changing consumer behaviour.
[1] Acharya, K., Bhowmik, S., & Mikkonen, J. (2013). Light is History. NORDES, 09- 12 June 2013, Copenhagen
[2] Acharya, K., & Mikkonen, J. (2013). Publishing Energy Use: Inferences from a Prototypical Practice. IASDR2013, 24-30 August 2013, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo
[3] Acharya, K., Mikkonen, J., & Keinonen, T. (2010). Self-Regulating Resource Consumption Through Personal Mobile Device. In Proceedings of the LeNS Conference, 29 September-1 October 2010, Bangalore, India, 345-350 ISBN: 978-1- 906093-54-9
[4] Acharya, K., & Mikkonen, J. (2011). A Shared Space Texting Energy Use. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE), 25-28 July 2011, Nottingham. 251-255. DOI: 10.1109/IE.2011.49 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IE.2011.49