Watt-a-Feeling – Raising Energy Production Literacy Through a Tangible Installation
Filipe Quintal, Clinton Jorge, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Nunes, Mónica Sofia Santos Mendes · Advanced Visual Interfaces · 2014
Nowadays energy supply is ubiquitous and pervasive. It is everywhere and nowhere. One cannot see or grab hold of energy. This invisibility and intangibility may lead people to misconceive what is energy, thus underestimating its production costs and subsequent financial and environmental impacts. Further, the units of measure of electricity (e.g. kilowatt) are notions difficult to contextualize and understand. In this paper we propose the design of an installation aimed at raising energy production literacy through playful interaction. We propose Watt-a-Feeling, a tangible public installation that resorts to the metaphor of an X-ray vision of a household wall in an attempt to increase energy literacy by exposing to householders where (which source) their energy is being provided from. Interaction with the installation begins with a visitor producing (locally) enough energy to reveal the X-ray vision combined with short comparative facts that should help the public contextualize the production of energy within the larger context of regional energy consumption.