Examining the Role Visual Graph Structures Play in Collective Awareness and Cooperative Decisions
Marlen Promann · 2018
Modernizing the energy grid to a stable sustainable multi-directional energy generation, consumption and storage in the automated smart home context requires new forms of civic engagement. An interdisciplinary corpus of eco-feedback scholars have highlighted the potential for technologically mediated feedback to make people more aware and cognizant of their energy usage. But most commercial energy monitors draw on economic behavioral models that render residents as rational decision makers who seek to save money on their next energy bill. The more recent research in academia is grounded in social psychology suggesting that prospective energy conservationists are driven by social norms. These individualist perspectives have failed to address the potential of leveraging social behavioral theories to design technologically mediated feedback that enhances individuals' awareness of and willingness to cooperate with the wider digitally interconnected social collective. This research addresses this gap by testing how particular visual structures of feedback graphs increase collective awareness and cooperation in the home energy-monitoring context. Integrating socio-cognitive theories that explain how information cues affect motivations and goal-oriented behaviors with existing work in information visualization, this dissertation theoretically derives and empirically examines a set of visual design patterns for eco-feedback that may make individuals more collective and cooperative.