Energy Data Visualizations on Smartphones for Triggering Behavioral Change: Novel Vs. Conventional
This work addresses the problem of reducing energy consumption for power consumers through improved data visualizations, but it is incremental as it builds on existing visualization methods.
The paper investigated whether novel or conventional data visualizations on smartphones are more effective at triggering behavioral change in electrical energy consumption, finding that while participants slightly preferred conventional charts, their understanding of novel charts was 8% better.
This paper conveys the importance of using suitable data visualizations for electrical energy consumption and the effect it carries on reducing said consumption. Data visualization tools construct an important pillar in energy micro-moments, i.e., the concept of providing the right information at the right time in the right way for a specific power consumer. Such behavioral change can be triggered with the help of good recommendations and suitable visualizations to convey the right message. A questionnaire is built as a mobile application to evaluate different groups of conventional and novel visualizations. Conventional charts are restricted to bar, line and stacked area charts, while novel visualizations contain heatmap, spiral and appliance-level stacked bar charts. Significant findings gathered from participants' responses indicate that they are slightly inclined towards conventional charts. However, their understanding of the novel charts is better by 8% when the analysis questions are investigated. Finally, a question is answered on whether a group of visualizations should be discarded completely, or some modifications can be applied.