With the iPhone platform there is definitely a lot of potential for bringing these types of tools into the social sphere - each of these could be turned into interfaces for web-based hypermiling competitions with friends, for example.

AccuFuel

As with all of these apps, AccuFuel focuses on changes in your odometer and the amount of fuel you get at the pump. I have played with this one a bit. It has a nice widget feel to it - simple interactions and easy data entry. You can set it up to track mileage for more than one car and flip through them just as you can flip through multiple cities in the iPhone weather app. This is more graphical than most - trends over multiple time frames are shown graphically. By Appigo.  ($.99 in iTunes)

Car Care

From the look of it, this app gives you a little more power, if you want it. It does a little more than mileage tracking - you can use it to set car maintenance reminders, which may be handy if you base such things on distance driven. It looks like there’s a little more granularity for those that want it - you can track city vs. highway miles, regular vs. super/premium fuels, and price. There is an import feature if you’ve been keeping data on your computer. This one also has a little visual design and a graphical trending screen. By KB Productions. ($4.99 in iTunes)

CarStat

CarStat uses more of a tabular layout and straight-up data entry approach.  I appreciated that CarStat starts up with some “dummy” data to show me how it works right off the bat.   I think that some of the interactions, such as the way the user calculates averages and totals, could be rethought to create a more fluid experience.  Calculation is naturally at the core of these types of applications, but I think moving these concepts beyond numbers — and into the experiential — is important. By Cogstorm. ($1.99 in iTunes)

FuelGauge

FuelGauge has a pretty attractive home screen (below) showing how my energy use is trending.  There are a few things about FuelGauge that remind that sometimes precision and power don’t always improve the experience — for example, telling FuelGauge I pumped 5 gallons takes 7 taps - some of them zeroes in “5.000″, since FuelGauge always wants its values to the third decimal place.  I expect for an app like this, I will usually want my interaction to be as quick as possible.  But it seems the developer of FuelGauge is putting a lot of attention into future iterations of the app so it may be one to watch.   By iphonecodemonkey. ($.99 in iTunes)

GasHog

Like CarStat, GasHog uses more of a tabular layout and straight-up data entry approach. I have not tried it out, though from the screenshots, it looks executed smartly, if a little dryly.   Again, I think moving these concepts into the experiential is important for engaging a lot of people.  Only geeks like you and me will really put up with a ledger book approach.  By Adair Systems. ($.99 in iTunes)

Miley

I haven’t tried this one out, but it looks like it has a little character and playfulness to it.  As we’ve seen here on Green Interfaces, fuel economy calculators don’t tend to have much of a human touch, so I like the effort.  Reviewers in iTunes also comment that Miley has great tips for helping improve economy, giving it an educational function that some of these lack.  By BunsenTech. ($1.99 in iTunes)

Mileage Tracker

Mileage Tracker seems to have gone a similar route as CarStat and GasHog - tabular data entry interface.  By Lemdisyn.  ($.99 in iTunes)

Tankbuch

Tankbuch comes from developers in Germany, and is available in English, French, and German.  It has the added advantage of being free - but users in the United States will probably not find it usable as only km/l units are available.  By osXwerk.  (Free in iTunes)

If there is no “Printer Friendly Version” button to click, then GreenPrint’s free software might be the solution. The software does the reformatting for the user, so that efficient printing is fast, easy, and possible. Their goal is to save 100 million trees through extensive use of the program, hence why they’ve launched a free version.

.

(thanks, Kyra!)

I can attest to the Kill-a-Watt’s usefulness, but I also found it kludgy, difficult, and uninspired. Yet, it’s the only product of its kind on the market in the United States. While I am glad that it’s available, I think that some basic usability problems with the device would have been avoided with a little user testing.

(I have heard that there are many such devices on the market in Europe and elsewhere, and would be interested in hearing if the others’ product designs — or lack thereof — are comparable.)

Button overkill

The Kill-A-Watt seems to give you a lot of power, what with all its buttons, one for each unit of measurement — but really, do I need to know the Volts, Amps, Hz, or VA of my Ikea lamp?* Actually, I only want to know about Watts, since that is the energy language I speak, as a home user. I’m not drawing up schematics or breaking out the soldering board. The device hasn’t yet outgrown its roots on the electrical engineering geek’s workbench.

This device doesn’t need any buttons. Let me connect a device to it, and make a Wattage reading: and I’m done. If the maker wants to make several units of measurement available, one button would suffice to make the setting, and the default should be Watts.

Those hard to reach places

Basic assumptions in the form factor design of the Kill-A-Watt present problems for me once I start to test appliances around the house. It plugs directly into a wall, and its LCD display is on the front face, so to make any readings I need to crouch down on the floor. That’s even more than a little annoying if I want to test the stuff that’s plugged in behind the couch.

One potential solution would be to place the display on the top of the device, so that I can make a reading from above. Even then, the display might still be hard to read if it’s in a cramped space, since it lacks a backlight. My solution is to plug the Kill-A-Watt into an extension cord, so that I can use the Kill-A-Watt like a handheld device. That way, I can make readings where it would otherwise be hard to read, and also test appliances plugged into outlets that simply won’t fit the Kill-a-Watt.

The Kill-A-Watt is only easy to use if you plug it in to an outlet at eye-level (preferably a workbench), and bring your stuff to it. Most of us, I’d wager, just want to test our appliances where they are.

Testing over time

You can also leave an appliance plugged in to the Kill-A-Watt for a length of time and make a reading of its accumulated kWh usage. This is certainly useful, since the energy many appliances pull oscillates or varies with types of use. My laptop computer, for example, might use 25 watts using a word processor, but 70 watts running a game.

This kind of measurement also hints at the kinds of calibration the Kill-a-Watt enables you to do. When I first tested a bunch of my home appliances, I jotted down the initial Watt reading for each and moved to the next. That helped me identify those weird vampires I didn’t expect* — on this first pass I removed over 100 Watts of continuous energy suck from my tiny apartment. (Chief among my strategies: power strips and just uplugging stuff when I’m not using them) Later, I took more time and measured my commonly used things over a period of a few days, to get a better look.

A transition device

The Kill-a-watt represents the kind of cheap and simple interface we need immediately, as it may be years before the average home is equipped with smarter metering and ambient feedback devices. The market has yet to be really explored, as far as I can tell. I think even small improvements in its usability, and a modest, incremental extension of its functions (perhaps adding easy upload of your appliance data to a computer via USB) would bring us a little closer to more efficient use of home energy.

* I found that my Ikea lamps, by way of poorly designed power adapters that apparently like to stay warm for no reason, pulled 6 watts on average when turned OFF.

Significantly, the application connects the carbon footprint of my daily trips to actions I can take to offset it: on one tab, Eco2Go tells me how to take the same trip using public transit, and on another tab, it’s easy to buy carbon credits as I go. There’s a feedback mechanism, and clear paths to action.

I like that the designers chose to focus on one thing - my movements by car. It doesn’t overwhelm me and it aspires to do one thing very well: it helps me drive less, and if I have to drive, it helps me account for my driving’s environmental impact. As a model for a simple green tool, Eco2Go has the goods: it raises my awareness, teaches me alternatives, and empowers me.

Taking it even further, a social tab connects me to the broader community of Eco2Go users. There’s a lot of potential for a pretty cool social app that brings all the data to bear, and it looks like the Eco2Go designers are laying the groundwork.

Eco2Go is intended for the Google Android platform and was recently selected as one of the Top 50 finalists for the Google Android Developer Challenge (out of a talented field of 1700+ entrants).

Houston Chronicle photos

Two recent front-page articles in mainstream city newspapers covered the emergence of smart metering in Texas. I think it’s a good indication that these technologies and devices are nearing the mainstream here.

The Austin American-Statesman covered the installation from the perspective of utility efficiency and demand management. (Austin Energy has a pilot program for consumer meters, too).

The Houston Chronicle reported on smart metering from the consumer perspective, and while there was some fairly incomplete reporting on the costs — a lot about the costs to cover the new technology, and not much about potential savings — there were also a few interesting nods to customer experience in the article. For example,

[Reliant Energy CEO Mark] Jacobs thinks smart meters could change the way Americans use power for the better. The key is an intuitive user interface that doesn’t overwhelm the user, he said.

“It’s incredibly important we get the customer experience right with this,” Jacobs said.

The Statesman also published a smart Associated Press article that covered smart electricity from end-to-end.

It’s interesting to see some of the visual interfaces that the newspapers use to inform these articles. I have a thought that as these images begin to enter the visual vocabulary of the mainstream, the early impressions will shape what consumers will come to expect from these tools. Some of the earliest interactions — say, the ability to program your home to go low-power during the day, from your Blackberry — may also become conventions consumers will come to expect.

Austin American-Stateman photo

Links:
Austin American-Statesman:
Austin Energy installs automated electric meters
Brains for power grids

Houston Chronicle:
Power meters getting smarter

The Victoria, Australia government is running an ad pitching
conservation by depicting an average household’s production of greenhouse
gases. Black balloons sprouting from appliances, lamps and electronics
each represent 50g of greenhouse emissions.

The quiet commercial feels slightly sinister, with the dark balloons
sprouting out of the empty house. It’s an interesting way to wrap the mind
around the gas we’re dumping out with our activities.

While there are now some interesting variations on household energy
monitors, such as DIY Kyoto’s Wattson, I haven’t run across any that depict personal greenhouse gas output. To be effective, the monitor would need to put emissions in context, and calculate emissions based on the energy source for your particular home. One solution would be a mash-up of networked home energy monitors with an online component calculating emissions.

Do you know of any gadgets or interfaces that are displaying not only
energy usage, but greenhouse gas production in realtime?

(link: information aesthetics)

Visual readout of the navigation radio displays whatever power mode you are currently in: engine idle, engine power, hybrid power, regenerative braking, or battery power.

It sounds a little bit like the Energy Monitor screen on the Prius.  It shares the screen with sound system controls (AM/FM/XM Radio, CD, Aux), each accessible in different tabs.  

It’s notable that the screen is nowhere touted (that I can find) on the Chevy Hybrid website, but it’s the one feature visually called out (besides the vehicle itself, looking serene among the Redwoods) in the ad.   

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall as the marketers made their decisions about this ad.   I wonder why Earth Day brings this interface to the fore in its campaign, while it’s not really a part of the “standard” sell.     

How does the “visual readout” appeal to someone looking for Earth-friendly solutions this week, rather than any other week?  How does this type of interface function as a selling point for some audiences, and not for others?

Things are a little slow around here as I’m vacationing before beginning a new position at a design agency here in Austin.  Posting will be pretty low-key until I get settled back in to a work routine.  

“Using persuasive technology to encourage sustainable behavior”, from a group in the Netherlands; “Taking the Guesswork out of Environmentally Sustainable Lifestyles” from a team in the US;  and a Swiss contributed paper, “The Potential of UbiComp Technologies to Determine the Carbon Footprints of Products.”

The workshop promises to address issues around the design of augmenting, pervasive systems that aim to persuade:

Providing people with environmental data and educational information – via mass communications such as film, TV and print and new media, or micro communications such as pervasive sensor networks - may not trigger sufficient motivation to get people to change their habits towards a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle. This workshop seeks to develop a better understanding how to go beyond just informing and into motivating and encouraging action and change.

This sounds right up our alley; I only wish I could avoid the long carbon-rich flight to Australia to justify attendance.   I hope the organizers provide an open format for publishing and sharing results and even encourage participation from remote participants.   

Do check out the workshop webpage for links to some good resources.

Speaking of conferences, this weekend is CHI 2008, the SIGCHI conference, in Florence, Italy.  This year the conference is “going green” — due to the encouragement of a few folks from the Sustainable CHI Google Group, I believe.

After signing up, you’re asked to work through some questions about your lifestyle, to gauge where you are now, and where you can make an impact. This creates your Edenbee “Lifestyle Profile.” Edenbee immediately recommends some goals (”Take your next holiday close to home,” or “Use public transit whenever you can”) and then invites you to find more that match the changes you’re hoping to make.

This social goal-setting system is particularly interesting because it encourages discussions that are purpose-driven and relate directly to the environmental impact of “Lifestyle” and “Logbook”. People can tell stories and ask questions about any goal; for example, on the “I’ll compost all my food waste” page, people might trade tips on best practices in backyard composting. One can imagine even finding potential compadres who are working on making some of the same changes (And of course, groups provide a tried-and-true avenue to finding others). Like 43 Things, a pioneer in social goal-setting, Edenbee encourages not only information-sharing, but a way for people to cheer each other on.

It will be interesting to see how Edenbee puts the carbon calculator & log integrated with the site to new uses. When you combine a social network with familiar tools you can get some pretty neat things. From the synthesis we might see emergent behaviors, like a little friendly competition: the footprints of group members are averaged to create group footprints, and with a little flourish those can turn into teams, and tournaments. Throw in some collective goal-setting, and carbon footprinting’s a whole new ballgame.

If you’d like to try it out, comment here and I’ll send you an invite. Or, if you’re signed up already, let’s be friends.

*or as they like to say, “Beeta”.

The downside of all that travel, of course, isn’t just an achey back, but a whole lot of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The beauty of Dopplr’s plans to integrate carbon calculation is that a user’s motivation to use the system — keeping in touch with colleagues — ostensibly has little to do with creating data about energy or emissions. The designers of the system made a value judgement, and added a new dimension to what Dopplr can be for its users.

It looks like there will be a graphical element to show cumulative as well as cyclical patterns, and an added social dimension, by way of sharing your carbon details with others. I’m looking forward to getting a closer look at this when it’s made public.

*I’d like to recommend Tom Raftery’s blog, where he’s covering a lot of fantastic issues, especially in relation to computing and climate change. Just this week he’s written on Microsoft’s new initiative in the energy efficiency market, and on carbon accounting software. I first spoke with Tom last November during the Web 2.o Conference in Berlin, where he gave a keynote on Reducing Carbon Footprint. He’s been involved in creating a hyper-efficient data center, and has a lot of expertise in the green computing realm.