Energy use and the feedback cyclehttp://gizmodo.com/384473/manodo-display-makes-you-ocd-about-your-home-energy-usageSomething I've learned in my few years in the working world is that if an aspect of a business needs to change or improve, the first step is to start getting objective metrics about that aspect of the business. From there, you can make changes and see whether the metrics improve. The feedback cycle. You could make the same argument about energy use in the home. It's fine and dandy to encourage people to "use less energy", but without a tight feedback cycle it's hard to change behaviors. This product looks really interesting: Give people all the information they need in a friendly UI to see what affect their lifestyle changes are having on overall energy use. Update: How ironic! A sister of a friend of ours came over last weekend to install something very similar to this for us. The City of Waterloo is working with her organization providing people with these things for a couple weeks. Very cool. |