Patricia M. Kluckner

FORE-Watch – the clock that tells you when to use: persuading users to align their energy consumption with green power availability

Besides saving energy, using it at the right time (i.e. when there is a supply surplus, and the power is produced by sustainable power sources such as hydroelectricity or wind) is an important possibility to achieve positive effects for the environment. To enable the user to align their behavior with the dynamics of the energy generation they need to be informed about the current status of power supply and grid capacity. Furthermore, to be able to plan their behavior and possibly delay or advance consumption activities to more proper moments they also need to have access to high-quality forecasts about the future status of green energy supply. In this paper we present an ambient display design solution based on a common watch that is optimized for providing this information in an unobtrusive, ambient and persuasive way. We present and discuss requirements identified by use of literature analysis, focus groups and end-user questionnaires, outline approaches to calculate basic power generation forecasts based on weather forecast data and present an ambient interface concept designed to meet the identified requirements. We conclude that the developed approach has high potential to support desired behavior changes, and that achieving acceptable accuracy levels for the generation forecast is feasible with relatively little effort.

Exploring Persuasion in the Home: Results of a Long-Term Study on Energy Consumption Behavior

This paper presents a seven-months field study on a persuasive ambient display in private households. The FORE-Watch aims at adjusting the consumption behavior of energy users in 24 multi-person households and persuading them to change their timing of consumption activities; half of them were shown a forecast of the occupancy rate of the local energy grid (i.e., grid status), and the other half were shown how much energy will be delivered by green sources such as windmills (i.e., green energy). Our qualitative and quantitative survey and the energy consumption data revealed that the grid status group showed a more constant behavior than the green energy, indicating that the more dynamic forecast presentation did not lead to the same type of behavior change as the static forecast presentation. Overall, the FORE-Watch aroused awareness, attention and interest through permanent presence, clear and simple information, and changed the energy consumption behavior of our participants.

Repair now: collaboration between maintainers, operators and equipment in a cleanroom

It is greatly aknowledged in the CSCW community that supportive technology needs to adapt to its contextual usage to increase the collaboration between different user groups. Based on a Contextual Inquiry (CI) in the cleanroom in a semiconductor factory, we identified the maintainers working routines and their usage patterns with various maintenance devices. In the cleanroom maintainance tools could bridge the physical gap between operators and maintainers. In particular reporting tools should link the information gap. In this paper we will present design implications derived from the CI towards a novel-reporting tool for maintainers to support this cooperation between maintainers and operators in the cleanroom.

Ambient persuasion in the factory: The case of the Operator Guide

Increasing the efficiency in production while maintaining a low error rate is one of the key goals of semiconductor factories. Often this is achieved on a technical level but there is significant potential on the human side as well. By reducing the complexity of the work environment and presenting the right information at the right time and place operators can be supported in their decision making process and therefore the productivity can be increased. Ambient Persuasion, which combines ambient intelligence and persuasive technology, is a promising approach in this direction. In this paper we present the “Operator Guide”, an ambient persuasive system that aims to improve work efficiency and to reduce error response times of operators by showing the next best working steps. We provide a detailed description of the Operator Guide along with an outlook of the next steps within a user-centered design approach.

Assisting maintainers in the semiconductor factory: iterative co-design of a mobile interface and a situated display

Maintaining machines in semiconductor factories is a challenging task that, so far, is not sufficiently supported by mobile interactive technology. This paper describes the early development of a maintainer support system. Our goal was to develop a user-experience prototype, which consists of a mobile and a situated interface, to support maintenance activities and the coordination between maintainers and shift-leads. The interfaces are meant to reduce the amount of information and to improve awareness for defective equipment. Efforts described in this paper include the development of a conceptual user experience prototype, following an iterative user-centered design approach. Based on the requirements analysis, an initial mock-up of both interfaces was developed and later on discussed with maintainers in a workshop. With an interactive Wizard of Oz (WOz) prototype we examined the cooperative aspect as well as user experience factors (e.g., distraction, trust, usability) in a simulated factory environment.

Where to place my ambient persuasive display? insights from a six-month study

How does the placement of an ambient persuasive display for modifying energy consumption in the household change over a period of six months? There is limited knowledge about where individuals place such displays in their private households. Location is essential for the sustainable usage of persuasive displays. There is a need to gain insights into the placement decisions of users. We gathered this information in two studies. First, we did a requirement study to collect data where participants would potentially place a display. Second, we conducted a long-term household study to review the actual placement. Participants sent us pictures of their positioning at the beginning and the end of the study. It revealed minimal changes in the position of the displays, but that the choice of position is a very intentional one. We point out our findings and the benefit of this knowledge for the development of ambient persuasive displays.

Exploring Challenging Environments: Contextual Research in the Car and the Factory Through an HCI Lens

Nontraditional environments offer a variety of methodological challenges when exploring cooperation under very specific contextual conditions. We understand contexts as challenging when they exhibit very specific/unique characteristics that need to be explored beyond traditional and already better-understood working/office settings. Moreover, these challenging environments are contexts in which human-human interaction mediated by computing systems and human-machine collaboration is hard to observe. In this paper, we focus on two challenging environments: the highly context-dependent automotive environment and the complex context of a semiconductor factory. Both contexts offer potential in a variety of ways for novel computer-supported cooperative work research, such as driver/codriver cooperation and operator-robot cooperation. In this book chapter, two exemplary contexts “car” and “factory” will be characterized in terms of (1) research challenges posed by the context, (2) performed exploratory studies, and (3) methodological implications for the two exemplary contexts, as well as for CSCW and HCI research practices in general.