Final Appliance Screens

In my opinion people need more than a visual warning or representation of power use to motivate them to save more power. This was where the initial concept of my interface came from. I thought that someone; especially in the young adults age range need some kind of goal or motivation where they themselves benefit from saving power. As a young adult we have no real concept of money and saving it, therefore I thought that using a future purchase as motivation would be an effective way of saving power. 

The way my application works is it takes the users interest and links them to amazon.com where it has a feed of item the user may want to purchase, meaning a constant feed of motivating items to save power. The visual design behind my interface was inspired by the idea of atoms and orbiting particles. I used this inspiration to design these circular layers, which each represent a different time of appliance, eg heat/ water, entertainment. Each layer has arms that contain the appliances which orbit around the centre, where the goal is. The centre circle has the amount saved or the amount that is a goal saving. A desired item can be dragged from the amazon feed into the centre to make it a current goal. The orbiting appliances show how much power they are using as well how they are contributing to the goal. One close to the centre is using little power and helping save for the goal while far away is letting the user down from obtaining their goal. If an amazon item is in the centre the price counts down till the amount saved due to little energy use pays for the item itself, the more appliance you control and turn off the quicker you save, the quicker you obtain your item. These appliances can be watched for the usage that day, week or month to show you which appliances are using a lot not just on a daily scale. If an appliance is clicked on you will get stats and recommendations about the power usage of your appliance. 

The friend’s page is where you can compare power use to you friends by day week and month. Again how close the arm is to the centre the less power they are using, the further away the more they are using. You can click on a friend to obtain stats or to private message them to ask for saving advice.  The same concept applies to the data page, where you can see power usage of your local area, national and global.  The purchases page shows the user a history of purchases due to saving power and which appliances helped them achieve this goal the best and how much the contributed to paying for it.
I think my application would successfully reach and motivate young adults and teenagers to save power and money by doing so. The goal system and orbiting appliances is easy to understand  and can be interacted with in many different ways to easily educate about power usage and promote power saving. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Homepage

Appliance Page

Friends Page

Data Page

Purchases Page

Settings Page

Logo concepts

development sketches

showing how power orbit updates on Facebook aswell 

This image was experimenting with a suggested ring that shows
a dangerous level of energy being used and costing a lot of
money. While this idea was effective, I felt that it caused the
design to be a little visually crowded and not many
appliances would reached this level. Maybe having the
appliance rings flash red would be more effective.

Image showing how my design would look like on the ipad

an image showing how my design relates back to initial concept

of the appliances orbiting around the main goal or amount 

saved in the center

112 interface development - Colour schemes

I tried out different colour schemes, thinking about what each layer should mean

and what information they should give the user. I thought about the colour 

changing depending on how much energy is used. For example the last two,

one is soothing blue and purple colours meaning low energy use, while the 

other uses alarming bright red and yellow to notify the user a lot of energy is

being used. Or maybe that the goal has been reached, and the next purchase
goal can begin.

older posts for more development

112 interface development sketches

Jenny Atkins suggested that the bottom menu was more
visually appealing and takes the attention away from the
main focus.

Ike Von Rohden suggests that you should be able to click and get information on

each individual room. A ring that circles the appliances, when reaches shows 

appliances that are using too much energy. Also reminded me that when 

comparing to friends some information is personal and private. Also an instant 

message system to ask advice from friends. 

Hartmut Otting suggests that circles should remain the same size. When touched 

they should be bold and more colourful than the others to draw attention. When an 

appliance is clicked on, the user could be linked to a page with information on that

specific appliance and it's energy usage.

DSDN 112 - Concept, Proposal

My concept idea is a social networking application, which uses money as its primary motivation to save energy. The application incorporates both Facebook.com and Amazon.com, to use user’s interests to find objects that the user may want to purchase with the money they save. A constant stream of items the user may be interested in purchasing is run down the side, showing information about the item, and how much energy they would need to save to purchase it. Giving the user a strong incentive to save energy. Along the top are buttons that navigate you to different parts of the application. These all use the same design idea, inspired but the same kind of orbit represented in atoms.  This is used because it is quite a simple way to show how close you are to your goal or how much you are saving. As well as specifically showing you what appliance is doing what, how much it is saving and what ones are letting you down. The colour and the distance of the circle represents how close or far you are from your goal, to show which ones use more energy and which ones are letting you down. There is also a graph at the bottom that can quickly show you precise data at the same time.                                                                   The same idea applies to the other pages, for example showing how you compare to your friends, whose saving more energy and when clicked on, shows you extra information like what appliances they are using etc. Each circle is from each page is interactive as it shares different information and helps the user understand how much energy they are using or saving, with the motivation of a goal as to where there money that they save can be spent. 

Application showing the appliance interface

Application showing the friends interface

Application showing the purchases interface

Application showing the history/ data interface

DSDN 112 - interface development

Developing Concept

Developing concept

Developing concept

Developing Idea

Developing idea

Logo Concepts

Early Concepts

Early Concepts