20/10-11 - Pressemeddelelse

Design improves energy usage

At DesignCamp 2011 49 design students from across the world gathered in facing one of the biggest resource challenges: Adding emotional value to energy.

Cordy Swope, Design Strategist and facilitator of the DesignCamp, explains:
"The challenges with respect to energy are that it's largely abstract and invisible. And all the terms that are used to explain energy are inadequate to the average person. For example, I don't understand what a kilowatthour actually is."

The ElecTree
The group of international design students has spent two weeks at the Kolding School of Design in Denmark to come up with creative suggestions for how to influence the behaviour of energy users towards reducing their electricity consumption.

One of these projects is ElecTree which visualises the electricity consumption of a household in a decorative and inspiring way, so that you become aware of where and how you are using electricity. This way, ElecTree might help reduce your electricity bill in the future. The group explains:

''We tackled the issue of communicating energy usage in a visual and playful manner using exploration and curiosity as an emotional medium to experiment with. The ElecTree allows the user to become more aware of the energy they use in their home by using colour, shape and movement. Each branch represents different appliances in the home and when facing upwards, creating an abstract organic form, shows that appliances are being used in an efficient manner. However, when the organic form starts to wilt and fall apart, this reflects that the user is wasting energy.''

Projects ready for the market
The jury praised the group for thinking outside of the box and for abandoning the traditional idea that information design must be based on a screen, and said that the design was fundamentally ready to go into production. Likewise, they encouraged the industry to try out more of the other projects from the camp which, among other things, offered lessons for children, several different thought out campaign suggestions, and new ways to bring social gaming into energy consumption.

And it is exactly in the interface between the industry and the consumer that designers can make a big difference.

"The key thing that we bring to the party is the ability to add form, shape and meaning to potential new experiences for the market. That is something that technologists and businesspeople will only be able to do a little bit of. Designers can actually synthesise all of those competing needs from the technology and business side and bring it into something that people actually desire and want," Cordy Swope says.

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Additional material:
ElecTree animated presentation:
http://vimeo.com/30554310
DesignCamp news feature:
http://www.designskolenkolding.dk/designcamp2011/?p=826