PowerWise is a smart home system that includes dashboards and smart plugs. It can help users solve climate and environmental problems at home. You can also manage home appliances with simple switches and warm reminders to pay attention to the user's power consumption. Also provided is how to learn to save electricity at home.
I chose to design PowerWise because I wanted people to reduce their power usage and learn more about how to save power at home. I believe if everyone were smarter about their power usage and learned more about saving power, we could reduce our impact on the environment.
How can we lower our carbon emissions at home?
Turn off the lights that are not in use, and turn off the indoor lights when there is sufficient light during the day. Turn off the lights when you leave the house.
Control the temperature in your home to regulate the comfort temperature using a thermostatic system. When you go to your room you should turn off the other air conditioners and only use the air conditioner in the room you are in.
When you use heating or cooling, check to see if the windows are closed. If you need ventilation, turn off the heating or cooling in your home.
Avoid running many electrical appliances at the same time at home. Many appliances are still consuming power even if they are turned off, so we need to unplug the appliances that are not in use. This saves a lot of power.
Use energy-efficient appliances at home like washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners (Georgetown University, 2023).
Technologies, Materials and Production methods
Tapo smart plug
Tapo Smart Plugs are a popular energy-saving tool. I researched Tapo online and bought a plug to research and test at home.
Tapo Smart Plugs connect to the user’s phone via the Tapo mobile app. Users can create an account, add devices to the app and control the connected device to do things like turn on and off.
After researching and testing the Tapo Smart Plug, I found that while it is easy to get started, and easy to use, I don’t know how much power I am using and how much I am potentially saving as opposed to other people using the same appliances.
Tapo Smart Plugs connect to the user’s phone via the Tapo mobile app. Users can create an account, add devices to the app and control the connected device to do things like turn on and off.
After researching and testing the Tapo Smart Plug, I found that while it is easy to get started, and easy to use, I don’t know how much power I am using and how much I am potentially saving as opposed to other people using the same appliances.
Smart thermostats
Some houses may have a thermometer which tells the temperature of the room. My home has a few thermometers in the main rooms. However, I still need to watch the thermometer if it gets too high, and I need to remember to turn off the heater when it gets too hot.
I saw a lot of products online of smart thermometers that would monitor the temperature in a room, and send that information to other devices like heaters. This means that you can control heaters to turn on only when the temperature goes below a certain amount, or you could set your heater to turn off after the temperature of the room becomes too high.
I wanted to bring this functionality into my own design, and have devices that could talk to each other more easily so that users could control more parts of their home.
I saw a lot of products online of smart thermometers that would monitor the temperature in a room, and send that information to other devices like heaters. This means that you can control heaters to turn on only when the temperature goes below a certain amount, or you could set your heater to turn off after the temperature of the room becomes too high.
I wanted to bring this functionality into my own design, and have devices that could talk to each other more easily so that users could control more parts of their home.
Smart Meters
Most users do not have a way to see how much power they are using. The only way they can know is by guessing how long an appliance has been turned on for, or at the end of the month when they get their power bill.
Many smart plugs in the market today do not have the function to record how much power you are using in the plug.
I wanted to add this functionality into my design so that with each smart plug you can track how much power you are using through the appliances that are plugged in.
Many smart plugs in the market today do not have the function to record how much power you are using in the plug.
I wanted to add this functionality into my design so that with each smart plug you can track how much power you are using through the appliances that are plugged in.
Interviews
I interviewed 5 people, and I wanted to know their opinions and thoughts on carbon emissions, how it brings impact on their lives, and how they solve these problems.
What surprised me through the interview is that the problem of carbon emissions affects everyone's lives such as bad weather, health, environmental pollution and climate change. Everyone is also concerned about the issue of carbon emissions because well it's connected to climate . They think that we definitely need to do something about it because they think it's going to affect a lot of people's lives in a very negative way if it hasn't already.
Everyone also wants to know how much electricity they are using at home and then take action and change their electricity consumption, but they also know how to reduce electricity consumption without affecting their normal life.
Target User
I made a persona Anna after interviews,. Anna represent my target user. My focus group is users who care about the environment and want to try take action by saving power at home.
Personas
User Journey
User Flow of Turn off Devices
User Flow of Learn more Save Power Tips
User Flow of Add a New Device
Wireframes
This was my initial idea, and I designed many different plugs. I also designed a conceptual diagram of how to connect the plug to dash broad.
I made low-quality plug and Dashboard prototypes in class and ran them through the paces. I asked my classmates and teachers to help me test. I wanted to observe everyone's behaviour and experience and then they would give me feedback.
Lo-fi Prototype
I made some changes after getting their feedback. They felt that the homepage of the dashboard was a little confusing because there were too many things to look at. Then I organized them into groups and reduced some places that they didn't pay attention to.
Prototype-Homepage
Adding device
Remind user to turn off the heater
Learning pages
Rewards system
Plug Mockup
Future Development
I hope that more people will use the powerwise management system in the future. More and more people can save more carbon emissions and slow down the pace of climate change. In the future, powerwise will have a mobile version, and users can check their home appliances and power consumption anytime and anywhere. There will also be competitions with family, friends and communities to see who uses less electricity. Encourage more people to pay attention to their electricity usage and make changes for our environment.