Design workshops report: executive summary

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Intro

This report gives an executive summary of a more detailed design document being produced for July. This report has the following sections:

• brief description of the method of the email exercises and design workshops carried out so far
• a list of key findings from these activities
• themes emerging from the activities that we believe are significant enough to research further
• a second set of activities that need to be carried out to clarify our understanding of the requirements at each workplace
• a brief description of the type of systems/applications we currently expect to build for each workplace

Method review

The paper prototyping process consisted of two stages on each location:

• Personal email exercises
• Collaborative design workshop

15-20 ideal candidates were identified for each location representing the different groups involved in using or managing energy in each workplace, including the typical workplace inhabitants (staff "on the ground"), management, operations (administration), estates (facilities management & maintenance) and security.

Personal email exercises were sent to each candidate at each workplace. Where possible, the same candidates were also invited to participate in the collaborative design workshop at their workplace.

Personal email exercises

These exercises allowed the Nottingham researchers to gain basic understanding about the three workplaces before running the design workshops. We also hoped that the exercises would cause the participants to start thinking more creatively about electricity use in their workplace before attending the design workshops.

Participants were sent three exercises by email:

• The first exercise asked the participant to sit at their usual position in their workplace, look around, then sketch a diagram illustrating how electricity is being used around them. Results from this exercise allow us to judge how completely the participants understand the workplace's use of electricity, and whether they think more about particular types of electricity use.

• The second exercise asked the participant to sketch out a diagram of the different groups that existed within their workplace, and to describe how the participant felt the electricity use of the groups might be compared. The results from this exercise allowed us to assess how connected the participants felt to one another, and how much they already thought about comparisons with their peers.

• For the third exercise the participant was given a floor-plan of their workplace and were asked to mark locations where they thought information could be displayed for the different groups identified in exercise 2. The results from this exercise demonstrated how the participants thought about their workspace, e.g. which spaces were suitable for which purposes.

Collaborative design workshop

Each workshop consisted of three activities:

• Critique: six archetypal workplace energy displays were shown to participants, who were split into groups to discuss the positive and negative features of the displays and their suitability for their own workplace. This exercise familiarised the participants with the types of displays currently deployed in workplaces and to encourage them to think creatively about how similar technologies might be designed for their workplace. Equally, the activity allowed participants to become more comfortable working with one another before continuing on to more challenging activities.

• Fantasy: participants were again split into three groups. Each group was encouraged to build on the positive aspects they had identified in the previous exercise, as well as any needs that they had identified for their own workplace, to begin developing ideas for technologies that would help the staff in their workplace reduce electricity use.

• Implementation: in this final exercise participants assessed the ideas developed in exercise 2 to determine whether there was a genuine need for those types of technology in their workplace, whether the ideas could be applied in other workplaces, and what difficulties there might be in actually implementing the ideas.

In Nottingham and Cambridge the workshops lasted for an afternoon. In Beijing the workshop lasted a full day, allowing the second activity to be more thoroughly structured (in this case involving persona, scenario and storyboard development, rather than simple brainstorming).

The aim of these workshops was not to produce designs for technologies that we could immediately implement. They have been a very good opportunity for us to collect detailed observations of the participants to understand what type of technologies will be useful for the workplaces, and the type of effect that these technologies would have on the workplace. We believe that they have also been useful in increasing the interest of the participants in understanding electricity use in the workplace.

We have begun to process the paper outputs of the participants, our notes taken during the workshops and our videos of the workshops to identify the significant issues in each workplace. These are summarised in the next section.

Outcomes of Horizon workshop at Nottingham University

General findings

• Horizon currently plays a flat fee for energy – this means that there is little incentive within the wider context of the University to reduce energy consumption
• Energy is required for many workplace activities – incentives for employees to reduce its use are not there at present, especially if this reduction compromises the efficiency of working life
• Energy usage should not be demonised as it is necessary in working life
• Making comparisons between individuals and groups within the university is difficult as everyone has different roles and responsibilities
• At present it may be impossible to determine individual usage as several people might share a 4-way plugged into a floor box
• Even equipment that is mostly used by an individual can be influenced by other individuals - eg systems administrators may log in to a computer remotely, or may determine policy on when it can be turned off
• Some equipment is shared between individuals (coffee machine, office lighting) - in which case collective agreements about behaviour may have been made, or policies may have been imposed
• Sometimes shared equipment causes conflict - eg over control of heating level in a room
• Some equipment is mostly out of the control of the individual - eg building-level heating (although individual heaters can be turned on and off.
• Not all energy use related to employment is in the workplace – some people travel a lot, for example, and will be using energy for this
• If energy monitors claim to provide objective data for individuals or groups, then people will need to have confidence in the accuracy of this date.
• It can be difficult to place a clear boundary between workplace energy usage and home energy usage - eg lots of people report charging personal phones at their desk, but sometimes work at home, so consuming their own energy for work purposes
• If energy monitoring makes people feel bad or guilty, then it could be ignored or hidden - and hence lose its effectiveness.
• One tactic could be to have systems that provide automatic suggestions for how to save energy – not just hints that too much is being used.
• There is an important question around whether individuals have enough agency to be able to make an impact on workplace energy usage – or whether more efficient systems are needed instead.
• We should consider other resources that consume energy, other than just electricity – paper consumption is one example.
• Reducing energy wastage seems a worthwhile goal – but defining what waste is could be very tricky. Behaviours that some consider wasteful (e.g. single-sided printing) might be an important part of the working process of others.
• Some energy monitoring technologies (eg especially active displays) might consume more energy than they save, and therefore be worthless!
• There is a danger that quantification of energy usage might lead to worse behaviour – such as trying to see how much energy you could consume. Or, if you are below average, starting to consume more.
• Many people in the workplace are not at all aware about really essential facts about energy usage – they would not be able to say how much difference it would make to “sleep” or “hibernate” their computer for example.

Design suggestions

• Install a system that monitors energy usage everywhere, but that does not report it to all staff. Instead, generate a warning if activity that seems worth changing is taking place (eg lights regularly being left on all night, or particular spikes of consumption in particular places)
• Install a single display that shows a "heat map" of electricity comsumption at all floor boxes in a particular space, but do not associate any actions with this. Instead, leave it to users of the space to decide what to do.
• Monitor certain types of energy waste that can be defined, and convert it into physical properties - e.g. door handles that get hot if lights are left on overnight.
• Design artefacts that feed only on waste energy - and which inconvenience a culprit as a result. Eg "energy spider" that grows to cover your keyboard if your monitor is left on all night.

Outcomes of Cambridge workshop

General findings

• Inhabitants note that there are many shared/social spaces in Cambridge that need to be designed for, not just individuals and individual rooms
• Participants are concerned that existing displays range from very simple to very complex representations of data, but never provide an understanding of what that data means in that workplace, or recommend how behaviour could be changed
• Inhabitants find it difficult to think of what could be changed about their behaviour:
• Most behaviour is necessary for their job AND
• Lots of features of the building cannot be changed by inhabitants (or might be hidden)
• Belief amongst inhabitants that there are more opportunities for behaviour change at home rather than work
• Management believe that question should be asked: does a solution really need to be technological rather than social/organisational?
• Should displays focus on activities using energy rather than people using energy?
• Evidence of missed communication between building management and inhabitants: a lot of information about how building can be used effectively is on internal websites, but inhabitants are unaware of this. Evidence that information has also been given to inhabitants periodically so some have missed out, e.g. people starting jobs recently haven’t received information about remote booting facilities for computers, therefore can’t contribute.
• Building management system relatively unintelligent: building manager's knowledge of how building is used is essential to fill in any gaps in the sensing system and to react to unexpected behaviour of inhabitants
• Inhabitants expect information about how building is managed to be near relevant features of the building (e.g. info about windows to be near windows)
• Confusion amongst inhabitants about features that are managed differently in different parts of the building
• University of Cambridge runs an electricity incentivisation scheme - cash savings for electricity saved (can be invested as building management wants), cash penalty for any use over threshold. Threshold decided on past performance with fixed percentage reduction.
• Inhabitants currently not well informed about the scheme
• Participants ask: should reward for meeting reduction be used for green initiatives (e.g. more efficient servers) or rewards (party fund...)? Should it be for the winning school (who by definition are already more green) or for worst performing schools for whom the investment would achieve the biggest improvement?
• Practical attempts have been made by building management to engage inhabitants: power monitor on each socket strip (i.e. for each workstation) that has to be manually reset. Aim to allow comparison between workstations. However there is agreement that not enough has been done to make this easy and engaging for inhabitants (they appeared to be unaware of this initiative)
• Building manager has previously made large changes, e.g. lighting in corridors - there was no feedback from inhabitants when it moved from 9pm shut off to 7pm shut off. Inhabitants wonder whether these changes affect culture within building: building currently emptyish around 6pm - different than what it used to be when the department was based in town centre (used to be 24/7 building - but curving off now). Late working is not being actively discouraged, but culture appears to be changing.

Design suggestions

• Raising people's awareness of energy consumption can be simple like a piece of paper (poster) or display or at a higher level like a piece of adaptive art. People could get a more detailed view of information through a website.
• "Kill switch" for corridors and communal rooms: one button to turn off all appliances if you’re the last one (also for cleaners …). Energy usage profile might provide awareness, but awareness is not enough: people need to feel able to do something in that time and that space.
• On-screen widgets for computers to show "waste". How to define waste? Time away from computer, while computer is on (doesn’t always work - could leave computer to leave it processing/printing, etc.)? Also for kitchens, to educate inhabitants about how significant each use of kitchen appliances is.
• Information should be pushed to people, not requested by people (otherwise people won’t bother).
• For management: diagnosis of behaviour within the building to pinpoint energy wastage. Focus on appliances using the most energy - biggest savings to be gained. Avoid frustrating individuals for little gain.
• Dialogue is important. Maybe telling inhabitants how the building is being adapted, this is more interesting than saying how it works. Inhabitants might understand, even if they don’t agree. Providing feedback on “invisible” (background) changes to inhabitants could make inhabitants less likely to complain about issues, or to give suggestions rather than just complain.

Outcomes of China Mobile workshop

General Findings

• Management realise that resource/utility management is currently a significant issue and that it will become very important when China Mobile Research (CMR) move into a new dedicated building:
  • In China, energy is a limited resource and buildings are given a quota for electricity. Currently CMR rent part of a shared building: the building's management company monitor, maintain and control the environment (and CMR must apply in advance for part of the building's energy quota); CMR monitor, maintain and control internal resources (servers, etc.). In both cases the resources are controlled manually.
  • When CMR move into a new building, they will share this building with other departments of China Mobile. While China Mobile will own the whole building, the departments will still have to compete for their own share of the building's quota: the main change will be that China Mobile departments will be competing internally for shares of the quota rather than with other external tenants.
  • Quotas for energy are (we believe) based on peak usage; for this reason CMR believe that staff should be generally educated about how appliances use electricity, e.g. showing that a kettle produces a large peak, as this contributes to CMR's total use, but the main focus should be on understanding how large energy users (e.g. servers) use electricity: currently there is no way to understand how these resources use energy. Cloud servers that can scale up and down very quickly are potentially a real risk when peak electricity use is limited.
• There are two types of server within CMR: Big Cloud (which is controlled by CMR, but not really understood) and private experiments (which CMR do not always control). CMR would appreciate a greater understanding of how both are using energy, to allow optimisation of servers CMR can control (Big Cloud), and to allow more informed dialogue with clients using the private servers that CMR can't control directly.
• Beyond the server rooms there are two main concerns about energy waste:
  • Air conditioning: currently the air conditioning is centrally-controlled and is turned on whenever it might be needed (e.g. for weekend visits as well as week-day working hours); additionally, a lot of energy is used to start-up the air conditioning system. There is no local environmental control. CMR believe that money is wasted on air-conditioning in unnecessary spaces and on maintenance/depreciation of air-conditioning.
  • Lighting: similar issues to air conditioning (but less significant financial implications).
• If new technology is introduced to try and reduce energy/save costs, the savings for CMR must be quantified and visible to justify the costs. China Mobile are looking for a complete "smart" energy system but have not found anything suitable, and they would need strong evidence to justify the cost of buying and maintaining several smaller smart systems.
• Individual staff members did not find energy use to be an engaging concept; staff made it clear that any technologies built for them would need to be novel/entertaining in order to maintain their interest. Management also were less concerned about the energy use of individuals at their own workstations.
• Staff felt that it was acceptable to monitor individuals if the monitoring was fair/equal; there was also a feeling that it was more acceptable to display data on a public display (where everyone has an equal chance to view the data), rather than on personal devices.

Design suggestions

• There are two clear suggestions for research:
  • Technology audit: carry out an investigation to understand the financial implications of replacing existing "dumb" utility systems (e.g. manual centrally-controlled air-conditioning) with "smart" energy technologies (e.g. localised intelligent air-conditioning) and the effects on staff behaviour/necessary policy changes required to make newly-introduced smart technologies cost-effective.
  • Behavioural audit: implement energy monitoring technology to expose the major energy-using resources in CMR to investigate whether resources are used inefficiently and how the current booking system and wider working culture might be changed to use the monitoring data to influence the behaviour of staff (and CMR clients) to reduce energy costs.

Emergent themes

The following common themes have been selected as being representative of discussions at the workshops, and for their potential to guide and inspire the design of future systems in the C-Aware project:

• There are a variety of different forms of energy consumption in the workplace that need to be collectively considered

• Electricity consumption

• Paper consumption (often through printing material)

• Consumption of fuel (through travelling)

• Heating

• Others?

• Energy use in itself should not be demonised as it is considered necessary in the workplaces; instead a reduction in energy waste might be sensible, but different individuals might not agree on a definition of energy waste

• Interventions need to consider causal relationships between energy use

• eg there is no point reducing the amount of energy consumed through communications technologies if this leads to more energy being consumed through travel

• Organisations are not homogeneous - some subgroups within an organisation might justifiably use more energy than others

• E.g. a computer science department might be expected to use more than a social sciences department.

• Some individual roles within an organisation may justify a greater energy expenditure than others as well

• E.g. some individuals might have travelling responsibilities that require them to consume more energy than others

• It might be difficult to place strict bounds around the workplace in relation to energy

• E.g. some employees bring in personal devices and charge them from work power supplies, others sometimes work at home and use their own energy for this

• Energy behaviour needs to be considered in the context of the incentives that are provided by an organisation

• E.g. Cambridge University incentivises schools / departments to save energy far more than Nottingham University does

• Incentives can vary within an organisation

• E.g. at Nottingham, Horizon charged flat-rate for energy when in SCCB, but School of Computer Science probably charged relative to energy consumed.

• Control of energy use in the workplace is often shared rather than individual

• E.g. computers are used by particular employees, but partially controlled by systems administrators, individuals share four-ways, heating systems are shared across organiations etc. Informal agreements are often made in relation to the management of these resources.

• Individuals are expected to work productively and efficiently

• So pressure to cut energy use may require the resolution of particular contradictions caused by trade-offs between activites

• The agency of individuals to save energy is often quite limited

• E.g. only a few individuals can control building management systems, server rooms etc. Shared energy use is out of the control of individuals.

• Individuals may not be very aware at all of the amount of energy that is used in workplace activities

• e.g. most people would not be able to estimate how much energy was consumed by printing a page of text

• The actual impact of the consumption of energy in a task depends on how it is generated

• eg if a university runs entirely off renewables, consumption is not necessarily a problem

• Interactions between individuals and buildings can lead to energy consumption

• eg CL building requires particular patterns of use to perform efficiently

• The best patterns of use for a building may not be directly accountable to inhabitants

• so training etc may be required

Thoughts on research agenda

Employees at academic organisations such as Nottingham and Cambridge often have a significant amount of freedom in their working practice, and are often required to negotiate complex trade-offs between available activities. However, the themes above highlight significant barriers to the integration of energy into these negotiations. In particular:

• There may be insufficient incentives to encourage employees to consider energy (especially Horizon)
• There may be insufficient information to allow employees to make rational decisions about energy (especially Cambridge and China Mobile)
• Many important decisions in relation to energy are taken by particular individuals in specialised roles - hence other employees may lack the agency to influence energy consumption
• Much energy consumption in the workplace is shared, and therefore not directly under the control of any one individual; some energy consumption may be caused by people outside of the workplace (e.g. China Mobile's external clients using servers)
• Interactions between building architecture and individual actions can significantly impact on energy consumption, but the operations of buildings are rarely directly accountable to many inhabitants (e.g. air-conditioning)

However, realistic future scenarios (for UK) involve substantial increases in energy costs, and at some point, it may become necessary for individual employees to integrate energy into their daily decision making. This poses a number of interesting research questions, including:

• What incentives and information would be required to encourage individuals and groups to integrate energy considerations into their decision making?
• How can the operation of buildings be made more accountable to their inhabitants?

In China we already see this scenario: CMR are working with energy quotas, yet the understanding within the organisation is not sufficient to do this efficiently. The most interesting research question here relate to how to enable more informed energy use:

• Can energy information be integrated into existing booking systems/working culture to enable more informed use of resources?
• Is there a strong working culture of over-booking (risk-aversion) that will not change with extra information? Will staff trust the information about energy use?

Immediate actions in relation to research agenda

The following immediate actions are required before interventions can be implemented:

Engaging with with energy decisions makers

A small subset of employees at each workplace currently make significant decisions that impact on energy use. For example:

• Ian at Cambridge - his role as building manager involves direct consideration of energy use, especially given the incentives that Cambridge University provide for the reduction of energy consumption in particular buildings

• Estates office at Nottingham - seem to control much of university energy policy

• Utilities/building managers at China Mobile Research - have the best understanding of current energy use and how the bookings of internal resources are currently made

We suggest direct focused engagement with these individuals, through observation and interviewing, with the aim of documenting the negotiations that they make in relation to energy, the information that they draw on, and any changes that would facilitate their work.

Deploying energy monitoring

In China Mobile Research and Horizon workplaces some energy monitoring equipment needs to be deployed.

• In China Mobile Research, large resources such as the server rooms need to be monitored. It might be best to achieve this using the types of monitoring that Cambridge have deployed for their plant rooms.

• In Horizon we will deploy Green Energy Options energy monitoring kit (when it is delivered).

Possible interventions

These are suggestions for interventions that flow from the immediate actions, but require more project discussion / consensus.

Cambridge

We expect that interventions in Cambridge will take the form of a system that makes the automation of the building and its consumption of energy more visible to its inhabitants, and also allow inhabitants to give feedback on how comfortable they feel using the building. By creating this two-way dialogue, the building manager will be able to implement changes to the building's systems with more confidence, and inhabitants will have a better understanding of how to use the building in an efficient manner. There should also be public feedback about financial/environmental savings that have been incurred as a direct result of any changes.

Such a system may include:

• Public visualisation of the rules by which the building is currently automated
• Regular announcements to staff about changes made by the building manager and problems/misuse of building
  • Mechanisms for feedback about increase/decrease in comfort from inhabitants following changes
• Public visualisation of financial/environmental results of changes

Nottingham

In Horizon there is a clear feeling that staff can change their behaviour for environmental reasons (and in some cases are strongly motivated to do so), but do not know how to do this without affecting their work performance. There is a feeling that the group should be motivated, not just individuals. In response, we would suggest that Horizon would benefit from both personal and public interventions to expose the energy consumption of appliances used by individuals and groups. These interventions would:

• Educate staff about how different appliances use energy, allowing them to make choices about how to behave in the workplace
• Be focused on staff, not management (as there is little organisational incentive for management to reduce the energy consumption of the workplace)
• Focus on non-financial motivations of the staff, emphasising the wider impact of any changes
• Emphasise accuracy and clarity, rather than entertainment (as staff responded more strongly to interventions that inform rather than play)

To implement these interventions, a selection of personal and shared appliances within the Horizon workspace need to be monitored. Green Energy Options monitoring equipment has been ordered that should be sufficient to monitor the private workspaces of several staff members as well as key communal appliances (e.g. the coffee machine, printer, etc.). The data from this equipment will be pushed to the existing central energy database hosted by Amazon.

China mobile

There is a clear need for greater understanding within China Mobile about the energy use of various types of resource, primarily substantial computing equipment (servers), lighting and air-conditioning. We suggest that interventions be built that make this data available to management and to staff to allow use of these resources to be optimised.

A specific suggestion is to extend the existing resource booking system to incorporate energy data. This may be as simple as indicating typical consumption/peak of resources, or may be used to enforce a quota system on staff (where staff have a limited supply of "energy" that is consumed when bookings are made). We would suggest that such an intervention may make the issues faced by CMR management more visible to staff.

Similar to Horizon, these interventions require energy monitoring equipment to be installed. Unlike Horizon, there is no existing central database to store the energy data, so China Mobile will need to implement a database. Given the sensitivity of the data, this will most likely be internally hosted. We do not currently suggest to implement externally-accessible interventions, therefore there is no need for the energy data to be accessible externally.

Conclusion

Our observation of the design workshops carried out at the three different workplaces have given us an understanding of the key issues relating to energy use at each site. Based on these observations we have produced suggestions as to what type of interventions and studies could be carried out in each case.

We have concluded that before any suggestion can be implemented we need to carry out one further, much more focused discussion activity with particular individuals at each site. This will need to happen soon in each case and will result in final designs for the interventions at each workplace. At the same time there is still a requirement to implement electricity monitoring systems in both Horizon and China Mobile Research - this can take place at the same time as the discussion activities.

Key milestones

• A full report of the design workshops will be produced by the end of July (as promised during the workshops).
• We suggest that meetings are arranged between the C-Aware researchers and the appropriate individuals in Cambridge, China Mobile and Nottingham from August-September to finalise the designs of the interventions.
• The energy monitoring equipment should be installed from August-December. We believe that installing the equipment in Horizon will be a simple task. China Mobile will need to consult with Cambridge to determine the best equipment to install in their workplace. At the same time, China Mobile will need to implement a central database to store the energy data.
• Initial prototypes of interventions for all workplaces will be produced from September-December.
• Testing/study of the interventions will commence in January 2012.