L’objectif de cette thèse est le développement d’une méthodologie d’aide à l’écoconception permettant l’optimisation multi-objectifs du cycle de vie de produits. Le premier axe de travail est focalisé sur la phase d’utilisation. Il s’intéresse à la manière dont différents segments d’utilisateurs vont utiliser un même produit et aux répercussions que vont avoir ces différentes utilisations sur les performances de son cycle de vie. Le deuxième axe vise à élaborer une méthodologie de modélisation réaliste et pertinente du cycle de vie de produits. Il est centré sur une problématique cruciale des problèmes d’optimisation : l’élaboration de l’objectif de résolution. Il propose l’utilisation de technique d’identification et de quantification des besoins clients afin de définir un objectif de résolution orientant vers les solutions de conception respectant au mieux les attentes des clients. Le troisième axe a pour but d’obtenir, par l’optimisation, une sélection d’alternatives de conception permettant de maximiser les performances du système. Une modélisation “gros grain” du produit incluant ses composants et leurs alternatives y est réalisée. / The goal of the thesis is the development of an ecodesign-aid methodology for the multi criteria optimization of a product’s life cycle. The first axis is focused on the use phase. It aims at understanding how a variety of user sis going to use the same product in a variety of diverse ways and how these differences are going to impact negatively or positively the performances of the porduct’s life cyle. The second axis aims at developing a life cycle modelisation method focused on realism and pertinence. It is centered around a crucial problem of every optimization exercice: the definition of the optimization objective that will guide the whole optimization process. Here is proposed the use of a technique for the identification and the quantification of the customers needs. These characterized needs are then used to define an optimization objective that favors the solutions which best respect the customer’s demands. The third axis widen the scope of the product’s model to include design alternatives. The goal is to better the life cycle performances through simultaneous design optimization and design alternatives selection.

Klimatförändringar är idag en av de största globala utmaningarna. Därför finns det behov av att jobba med detta inom alla organisationer. Measure & Change är ett företag i Växjö som har arbetat fram ett verktyg som automatiskt samlar in utsläppsdata. Målet med den här studien var att undersöka användbarheten av ett gränssnitt innehållande eco-feedback, tillsammans med hur en designprocess kan implementeras. Detta gjordes genom att testa Measure & Change redan befintliga verktyg innehållande eco-feedback, med hjälp av A/B test och intervjuer, mot en ny utvecklad prototyp. På prototypen applicerades designprinciperna mappings, feedback och constraints för att undersöka effekten av dessa och se om de kunde bidra till ökad användbarhet. Under studien framkom det en indikation på att designprinciperna bidrog till ökad användbarhet, men också att en designprocess fortsättningsvis kan appliceras och gynna användbarheten av gränssnitt innehållande eco-feedback.

Buildings account for 40% of energy consumption in the US. Despite all improvements in buildings shell, equipment, and design, CO2 emissions from buildings are increasing as a result of increased energy consumption. Since occupants spend more than 90% of their time indoors, they are inseparable and significant elements of building system dynamics. Hence, there is a great potential for energy efficiency in buildings using a wide range of programs such as education, intervention, energy feedback, etc. Due to advancement of technology and accessibility of high resolution energy consumption data, utility companies are enabled to focus on implementing energy feedback programs to induce energy efficiency and reduce the peak energy load in the commercial and residential sector. In order to better understand various aspects of energy feedback programs, in the first chapter of this dissertation, I conduct a comprehensive literature review on the state-of-the-art energy feedback study methods and identify gaps of knowledge and challenges faced by researchers in the field. Accordingly, the future research vision is laid out at the intersection of methods and gaps of knowledge used in energy feedback studies and future research opportunities and questions are provided. One of the major gaps of knowledge I identified in the literature review is the lack of quantitative analyses used to investigate the variability of occupant responses to commercial buildings energy feedback programs to evaluate the need for targeted and tailored energy feedback programs. In the second chapter, I conducted a comprehensive analysis on occupant energy-use responses under the influence of a uniform energy feedback program. Furthermore, I investigated the effectiveness of notifications on increasing the level of engagement of the occupants in these studies. The results supported the existence of a variability in responses and engagement level in a uniform energy feedback program which may be due to intra-class variability of occupant behavior. In the third chapter, based on the established need for a targeted energy feedback program, I investigate the predictability of occupant energy consumption behavior and its correlation with energy consumption. The results report that 46% of occupants may be good candidates for targeted energy feedback programs due to their combination of higher levels of energy-use and predictability of their energy consumption behavior. / Ph. D.

The increasing levels of comfort have caused an increased electricity consumption over the last couple of years, leading to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. At the same time, the interest and awareness regarding sustainability and climate change is growing, imposing a pressure on companies to incorporate sustainable businessmodels in their business. While the new levels of comfort might be difficult to change, bringing awareness to one's consumption and its' impact is still possible and can bedone through an Eco-Feedback Technology. However, this requires an understanding of the users' environmental consciousness and willingness to adapt their behaviour. To understand the effect that the environmental consciousness has on the design of an Eco-Feedback Technology and the risks and benefits said technology may pose on abusiness, interviews were conducted and a survey was distributed to gain an understanding of the environmental consciousness of the users of an video creationservice. The results were analysed using theoretical frameworks concerning environmental consciousness and the value-action gap. Additionally, experiments were conducted to calculate the environmental impact of the video creation process. The results indicated a high overall environmental consciousness amongst the users. However, the consciousness was found to be lower regarding the impact of electricity consumption and video creation. This suggests that the consciousness is dependent on the context of the users and the three aspects of consciousness should be viewed separately too, upon which the Eco-Feedback Technology should be adapted. Additionally, the users were not fully convinced an increased awareness would cause a behavioural change, suggesting a gap between attitude and action. The two mainbarriers for the gap were identified as lack of information and shift of responsibility which should be targeted by the Eco-Feedback Technology / Den ökande nivån av komfort i samhället är en av orsakerna till en ökning av elektricitetanvändningen de senaste åren, vilket har lett till ökade koldioxidutsläpp. Samtidigt växer intresset och medvetenheten gällande hållbarhet och klimatförändringar i samhället vilket sätter press på företag att integrera hållbara affärsmodeller i företaget. Trots att den ökade komfortnivån kan vara svår att förändra går det ändå att öka medvetenheten kring ens konsumtion och dess effekter, vilket är möjligt genom en Eko-Feedback Teknologi. Detta kräver dock en uppfattning av användares miljömedvetenhet och vilja att förändra deras beteende. För att undersöka effekten av miljömedvetenhet på designen av en Eko-FeedbackTeknologi samt eventuella risker och möjligheter som teknologin kan utgöra har intervjuer utförts och en enkät distribuerats för att få en förståelse för miljömedvetenheten hos användare av en tjänst för videoskapande. Resultaten analyserades med hjälp av teoretiska ramverk angående miljömedvetenhet och valueactiongap. Dessutom utfördes experiment för att beräkna och uppskatta miljöpåverkan av att skapa och rendera en video. Resultaten indikerade en hög övergripande miljömedvetenhet hos användarna. Däremot var medvetenheten gällande påverkan av elektricitetkonsumtion och videoskapande lägre. Detta föreslår att medvetenheten beror på sammanhanget avanvändarna och att de tre delarna av medvetenhet bör även analyseras separat utifrånvilket Eko-Feedback Teknologin ska anpassas. Dessutom var användarna inte övertygande om att en ökad medvetenhet skulle leda till en förändring i deras beteende gällande videoskapande, vilket föreslår ett gap mellan attityd och beteende. Studien identifierade två huvudbarriärer för gapet; brist på information och ansvarsförskjutning;som båda bör bemötas av Eko-Feedback Teknologin.

<p>The residential sector is responsible for approximately 21% of the total energy use in the U.S. As a result, there have been various programs and studies aiming to reduce energy consumption and utility burden on individual households. Among various energy efficiency strategies, behavior-based approaches have received considerable attention because they significantly affect operational energy consumption without requiring building upgrades. For example, up to 30% of heating and cooling energy savings can be achieved by having an efficient temperature setpoint schedule. Such approaches can be particularly beneficial for multi-family residential buildings because 88% of their residents are renters paying their own utility bills without being allowed to upgrade their housing unit.</p> <p>In this context, eco-feedback has emerged as an approach to motivate residents to reduce energy use by providing information (feedback) on human behavior and environmental impact. This research has gained significant attention with the development of new smart home technology such as smart thermostats and home energy management systems. Research on the design of effective eco-feedback focuses on how to motivate residents to change their behavior by identifying and notifying implementable actions in a timely manner via energy analytics such as energy prediction models, energy disaggregation, etc.</p> <p>However, unit-level energy analytics pose significant challenges in multi-family residential buildings tasks due to the inter-unit heat transfer, unobserved variables (e.g., infiltration, human body heat gain, etc.), and limited data availability from the existing infrastructure (i.e., smart thermostats and smart meters). Furthermore, real-time model inference can facilitate up-to-date eco-feedback without a whole year of data to train models. To tackle the aforementioned challenges, three new modeling approaches for energy analytics have been proposed in this Thesis is developed based on the data collected from WiFi-enabled smart thermostats and power meters in a multi-family residential building in IN, U.S.</p> <p>First, this Thesis presents a unit-level data-driven modeling approach to normalize heating and cooling (HC) energy usage in multi-family residential buildings. The proposed modeling approach provides normalized groups of units that have similar building characteristics to provide the relative evaluation of energy-related behaviors. The physics-informed approach begins from a heat balance equation to derive a linear regression model, and a Bayesian mixture model is used to identify normalized groups in consideration of the inter-unit heat transfer and unobserved variables. The probabilistic approach incorporates unit- and season-specific prior information and sequential Bayesian updating of model parameters when new data is available. The model finds distinct normalized HC energy use groups in different seasons and provides more accurate rankings compared to the case without normalization.</p> <p>Second, this Thesis presents a real-time modeling approach to predict the HC energy consumption of individual units in a multi-family residential building. The model has a state-space structure to capture the building thermal dynamics, includes the setpoint schedule as an input, and incorporates real-time state filtering and parameter learning to consider uncertainties from unobserved boundary conditions (e.g., temperatures of adjacent spaces) and unobserved disturbances (i.e., window opening, infiltration, etc.). Through this real-time form, the model does not need to be re-trained for different seasons. The results show that the median power prediction of the model deviates less than 3.1% from measurements while the model learns seasonal parameters such as the cooling efficiency coefficient through sequential Bayesian update.</p> Finally, this Thesis presents a scalable and practical HC energy disaggregation model that is designed to be developed using data from smart meters and smart thermostats available in current advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) in typical residential houses without additional sensors. The model incorporates sequential Bayesian update whenever a new operation type is observed to learn seasonal parameters without long-term data for training. Also, it allows modeling the skewed characteristics of HC and non-HC power data. The results show that the model successfully predicts disaggregated HC power from 15-min interval data, and it shows less than 12% of error in weekly HC energy consumption. Finally, the model is able to learn seasonal parameters via sequential Bayesian update and gives good prediction results in different seasons.

<p>    </p> <p>Technological advances and gaming have assisted users in becoming energy-efficient or raising awareness about energy efficiency. However, these games typically take place in schools and workplaces. Low-income households, which spend a larger percentage of income on utilities compared to average income households, exhibit greater sensitivity to energy disturbances. Despite this, there has been limited research on applying these technologies in low-income households. </p> <p><br></p> <p>The dissertation addresses the research gap concerning motivating low-income households to adopt new technologies focused on implementing energy-efficient HVAC behaviors. To achieve this objective, a gamification approach is employed, integrating a competitive social game into a cloud-based application named MySmartE. This application offers personalized eco-feedback and enables voice commands using Amazon Alexa. The game is deployed in two multi-residential low-income household communities located in Indiana. The collected data from field studies is analyzed to explore various aspects, including community interactions during the gaming seasons, technology adoption, and factors influencing participation in the social game. The findings reveal a positive correlation between increased gaming interac- tions and the adoption of MySmartE technology within these communities, underscoring the potential of gamification and technology to effectively engage low-income households in adopting energy-efficient practices. </p>

This paper describes a research through design project for reducing student’s food waste in a Swedish high school canteen. It was found that the design outcome is influenced by how a designer approaches the chosen problem space of sustainability. Building only on the existing perspectives of eco-feedback technologies and persuasive frameworks within interaction design, immensely constrains the role interaction design could take in working with sustainability issues. The complexities of sustainability related problems should be seen as a rich opportunity space to approach by design. Ethnographic research methods should be used when designing for sustainability. Found strengths of interaction design within design for sustainability were the data measurement of consumption and change. Together with the communication possibilities of digital and connected devices. The design outcome became a digital tool for kitchen staff to use when evaluating the lunch menu. The research also led to four suggestions for future design projects.

An essential part of combating climate change is to reduce energy consumption. As the industrial sector was accountable for approximately a third of the total global carbon dioxide equivalents in 2019, it is crucial for industries to manage their energy usage. Research within the field of eco-feedback shows that visualising energy data can inspire energy reductions and promote knowledge. The thesis investigates how a dashboard for energy data visualisations for the industrial sector can be designed to be usable and to inspire behavioural change for its end users. Usability is researched in terms of initial learnability and subjective satisfaction. Perceived behavioural change is studied through changes in users' awareness and attitude towards energy management.  A prototype of a dashboard for energy data visualisations is developed through three iterations of the HCD process. During the first iteration, a paper prototype is developed, and evaluated through a workshop. During the second iteration, the paper prototype is translated into a digital prototype, which is then translated into a software prototype. The software prototype is evaluated through end-user tests at the end of the second iteration. During the third iteration, the software prototype is improved, based on the input from the previous evaluation, and then evaluated through end-user tests. The usability of the software prototype is evaluated through the think-aloud method and a SUS questionnaire. Perceived behavioural change is evaluated by interviewing the test users about their change in attitude and awareness after using the dashboard.  The thesis finds that the dashboard prototype was easy to use and interpret. The following design choices were concluded to contribute to the usability in terms of initial learnability and subjective satisfaction: visually separating information, information adjacency, adding explanatory texts, using colour as a visual encoding, using a colour scheme that provides contrast and consistency, filtering data through multi-select, providing different options for visualisation, using interactivity for further data exploration, giving the user response to actions, considering chart junk and the data-ink ratio, and using unambiguous icons. In addition, the thesis concludes that the dashboard inspired changes in both the user's awareness and attitude towards energy management. The design choices that were proven to affect the user's awareness and attitude were: letting the user choose their preferred unit to represent the data, presenting the user with tips, providing internal and external data comparisons, visualising multiple energy-related key figures, allowing for historic comparison, reminding the user of upcoming activities, presenting a list of scheduled measures and providing feedback of a prognosticated proposed measure in terms of its intended effects.

Eko-feedback är något som under en tid använts för att uppmuntra miljövänliga beteenden hos människor. Att minska den globala uppvärmningen är högst aktuellt samt att minska världens textilavfall som årligen uppgår mot 70 miljoner ton. Det är därav av relevans att hitta lösningar för att uppmuntra miljövänliga beteenden för att minska det ekologiska fotavtrycket. Studien undersöker med hjälp av ett Chrome-tillägg om eko-feedback med personlig shoppingdata på-verkar användarna. De olika motivationsfaktorerna, som relaterat till aktiviteten har varit av intresse är: motivation, känsla av skuld, stolthet, upplevd konsumenteffektivitet samt ansvar. Genom att jämföra användarnas uppskattning av dessa motivationsfaktorer före och efter expe-riment ger resultatet en indikation på att denna typ av eko-feedback med personlig shoppingdata inte har en märkbar påverkan på användarnas motivation att ändra konsumtionsmönster av tex-tilier för att minska ekologiskt fotavtryck. Vidare forskning inom området kan vara ett bidrag till att bromsa ökandet av textilavfall samt den globala uppvärmningen.

[pt] Lidar com a experiência do usuário no campo do Design de Interação envolve diversos aspectos, muitos deles subjetivos: objetivos, necessidades e, nem sempre de maneira consciente aos olhos do designer ou do usuário, valores humanos. Quando se trata de projetos com foco na sustentabilidade estes valores assumem um papel relevante, pois representam o que consideramos importante na vida e ajudam a guiar ações. Um desses projetos é o eco-feedback, sistemas que visam informar e estimular comportamentos em prol da sustentabilidade. O foco desta pesquisa foi na fase de ideação do design de um sistema de eco-feedback voltado para incentivar a reciclagem de resíduos sólidos urbanos. O tema resíduos sólidos urbanos se consolidou a partir de uma pesquisa exploratória. Na fase descritiva, investigou-se como as informações sobre este assunto poderiam ser apresentadas e transmitidas, visando ajudar no entendimento da população em geral. Imaginava-se que a incorporação consciente de valores associados à sustentabilidade contribuiria positivamente para o desenvolvimento deste projeto. Assim, foram realizadas entrevistas com stakeholders identificados para levantar o entendimento deles sobre reciclagem e quais informações consideravam relevantes para o eco-feedback. Aplicaram-se também questionários para verificar quais valores eram priorizados pelo público e quais se relacionavam com comportamentos ligados à reciclagem. Com base nestes resultados, gerou-se um briefing para uma equipe de designers discutir ideias e rascunhá-las, tendo como foco os valores humanos selecionados. O resultado foi a elaboração de um fluxograma de telas de um dos dispositivos escolhidos, no qual documentaram quais valores estavam trabalhando, comprovando a hipótese da pesquisa. / [en] Dealing with user experience within the Interaction Design field involves many subjective aspects: goals, needs and, not always in a conscious way, from the eyes of designers and users, human values. When it is about projects focusing on sustainability, these values assume an important role as they represent things we consider important in life and help to guide actions. One of these projects is ecofeedback, systems developed for informing and engaging sustainable behaviors. This study focuses on the ideation stage of the design of an eco-feedback system for urban waste recycling. This subject emerged from an exploratory research. In the descriptive phase, we investigated how information about urban waste recycling could be presented and conveyed, aiming to improve people s understanding. We believed that a conscious incorporation of human values associated with sustainability would contribute positively to the design of this eco-feedback system. Interviews with identified stakeholders were conducted to know what they understand about recycling and what kind of information they consider important to be part of the system. We applied questionnaires to find out what values were prioritized by the public and what values had more strong relation to recycling behaviors. Based on these results, a briefing for the design team was created. They had to discuss ideas and sketch them, having the selected human values as a starting point. The result was a screen flowchart from the system to be applied in one of the selected devices. They documented which values they worked on, proving the research s hypothesis.