Watt-Lite; Energy Statistics Made Tangible

Increasing our knowledge of how design affects behaviour in the workplace has a large potential for reducing electricity consumption. This would be beneficial for the environment as well as for industry and society at large. In Western society energy use is hidden and for the great mass of consumers its consequences are poorly understood. In order to better understand how we can use design to increase awareness of electricity consumption in everyday life, we will discuss the design of Watt-Lite, a set of three oversized torches projecting real time energy statistics of a factory in the physical environments of its employees. The design of Watt-Lite is meant to explore ways of representing, understanding and interacting with electricity in industrial workspaces. We discuss three design inquiries and their implications for the design of Watt-Lite: the use of tangible statistics; exploratory interaction and transferred connotations.