Industrial Designer //Â Mechanical Engineer
EDEN
A platform for motivating, simplifying and visualising home energy behaviour change.
RMIT - Honours Project - 2020
Guided Walkthrough
How the Eden product service system works is quickly explained in this one minute summary video.
UX Prototype
Try the UX demonstration prototype by clicking on the image below, or scanning the QR Code. Note that the prototype works best with a strong internet connection, or when it's had a couple of minutes to fully load.
The Problem
Australia's energy usage and subsequent carbon emissions continue to rise, placing growing demand for increased and more consistently available electricity on our energy infrastructure.
Within Australia's current political climate, passively increasing energy demand is met with plans to invest into quick fix coal and gas oriented solutions that further perpetuate the looming threat of irreversible climate change.
While industry stakeholders need to find and implement their own solutions to reduce energy consumption, individuals still need to make sizeable reductions in their electrical impact to meet the global renewable effort half-way to reverse the effects of climate change.
Design Intervention
Individual actions can make a difference through reducing consumption and changing the timing of energy use to take greater advantage of existing and future renewable resources.
However, the biggest issue for households is that their specific consumption is near invisible, and so they lack knowledge about where to start making adjustments.
Instead of finding a traditional, efficient technology solution, there is another, and more widely accessible method of adjusting household energy usage; design for sustainable behaviour.
Solution // Project Overview
EDEN is a platform for motivating, simplifying and visualising home energy behaviour change.
At its core, EDEN divides potential energy reductions into individual appliances and activities that make steps forward clear and simple. It delivers personalised feedback by monitoring both appliance consumption and appliance usage via a multi-sensor tool named The Pebble, giving users insight into how and when they use their appliances.
Improved behaviour suggestions are tailored specifically to users, and are not only suggested, but are tested and reinforced by another period of monitoring that shortens the feedback cycle.
The portable nature of The Pebble encourages users to monitor numerous appliances around their home, being further reinforced by an encompassing points system. EDEN reduces the barriers associated with energy use reduction seeming too difficult, or too big a task. It turns energy ambivalence into energy ambition.
Extra Details
Learn more about EDEN by clicking on the images below.
Project Purpose
This project was completed as part of my 2020 Honours Project, the culmination of my Industrial Design Schooling. The project began the ever looming threat of climate change weighly heavily on my mind, exacerbated by the early 2020 Australian Bushfires that shocked the globe. I was frustrated with feeling powerless to do something about Climate change on my own. Many projects that were being developed by my peers alongside my honours were focusing on specific appliances or procedures in an industrial setting. I wanted to find a way for everyday people to make a difference, and most importantly feel good about it, so I focused on the household as a whole.