As part of the Ecofamilies project, which aims to encourage eco-responsible behaviors among families, Nice Côte d’Azur is organizing three 3-hour workshops in March, May, and June 2012. The first of these workshops will take place this Friday, March 16, 2012, at 6:30 PM with 19 families, 32 individuals, and about a dozen professional partners involved in the project.
The Ecofamilies Project:
It aims to prototype and test, through a co-design approach, an innovative technological solution to encourage eco-responsible behaviors among families. A set of personalized content will be offered to both parents and children, ranging from simple information to suggestions for actions to reduce energy consumption.
Why?
Currently, the vast majority of households have a very limited understanding of their energy consumption within their homes. Often, the only energy tracking done at home is through the meter reading. Therefore, we generally have no idea of the impact of our behaviors and choices on our energy consumption.
The energy bill is a purely accounting tool that is challenging to use for actual consumption management, firstly because it is sent out late, and secondly because the information is presented in a way that does not easily allow for understanding the factors influencing consumption. Thus, conditions are not met for consumers to take control of their energy consumption.
It is within this context that the Ecofamilies project aims to limit building energy consumption through a monitoring interface that provides consumers feedback on their own energy usage. The goal of the Ecofamilies service is to provide, at the appropriate time and in the appropriate form, defined in agreement with the users of this service, the synthesized information that will allow them to identify their energy-intensive processes and make informed decisions to reduce their consumption.
How?
The Ecofamilies project partners have recruited about thirty volunteer families in the Alpes-Maritimes area to participate in an iterative series of design workshops. These workshops will be privileged moments of exchange that will allow these families to strongly influence the specifications of the solution so that it best corresponds to their needs.
