wattguard

As a part of our Lean Design project, we created Wattguard, a mobile app that allows you to monitor your energy consumption and identify potential inefficiencies.

Design Thinking vs. Lean UX

As with most projects during my studies, we used a Design Thinking approach to create Wattguard. This means we started by understanding the user's needs and then creating a solution that meets those needs. This was done through a series of workshops and interviews with the users. We looped between the different stages of Design Thinking and Lean UX to create a solution that meets the user's needs.

This also means we used a user-centered view. We focused on people who live in shared flats or apartments and want to save money and energy.

"How much electricity do I use?"

During the first iteration of the research phase, we identified many problems that our users were facing. Interestingly, most problems could only be solved by solving earlier problems, so we needed to tackle them in the right order.

The main problems included:

• No feeling for current consumption
• No insights into energy distribution
• Biggest consumers not identifiable
• Missing Motivation for change

Our challenge was building a soltion that informs, without being boring and motivates to save energy without being overwhelming.

A step in the right direction

During the exploration phase, we found a promissing solution in our own environment. Our idea was to create a smart wall panel that would replace a normal light switch. Replacing it with existing infrastructure would keep the cost low and the installation easy. This is also mainly in places where our users would cross their paths daily, reminding them to save energy.

The different visualizations on the panel would show the current power consumption and the energy consumption of the room it's in, divided into three layers.

The first layer would show the current power consumption of the whole room, being green if the room is consuming less than average and orange if more. This would allow for a quick glance at the panel to see if the user is using too much energy.

The energy consumption of the room, grouped by categories would be shown in the second layer, such as lighting, heating, appliances, etc. This visualization would be shown in the form of a treemap.

In the third layer, the devices in a list in bar graph. This allowed for the most fine-grained view of the energy consumption.

Not the right solution, for now...

In the end, we decided to not pursue this solution, as it would require a lot of hardware and infrastructure, which would be too expensive for our users.

The final solution

In our final concept, we created a mobile app that can track, analyze and display the energy consumption of the whole house and each room.

The home page shows the energy consumption of the whole house, displayed in money, a simple to understand unit for users with less technical knowledge. The highest consuming categories are also displayed in the home page. Our main feature, the Device Diagnosis, can be accessed from the main page.

Metering done right

After many experiments, we found a way to measure the energy consumption of the whole house with a smart meter. This smart meter, together with a few smart algorithms, allowed us to track the energy consumption of the whole house and each device individually in real-time. This smart meter needs to be installed by a licensed professional, since it is tapping into the main electrical panel of the house. It still leads to a lot of savings, because the user doesn't need to buy smart plugs for each device he wants to track.

Device Diagnosis

The Device Diagnosis is our main feature. It allows the user to see the energy consumption of each device in the house. The user can test each device and depending on the type of device, our app will give them information on how to save energy and efficiency of the device. For example, boiling 1l of water takes more energy with a microwave than with a kettle.

Impact

The wattguard plays a big role in the current energy crisis. It allows the user to see the energy consumption of each device in the house by educating them about the energy consumption of each device.

Team: Luca Félix, Selamawit Gegziabher and Anja Gutmann