Problem

11.6% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from the energy used in homes and commercial buildings in cleaning, heating, lighting, and other activities. Increasing the efficiency of energy usage on a house-by-house basis would reduce coal emissions. In order to have people change their habits, we must find a practical method of encouraging people to do so.

<aside> 💡 Design an electricity and water report screen for a smart home app that will help people consume water and electricity more efficiently.

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Summary

Google Home Energy aims to help families to reduce their energy consumption rates by allowing them to track their electricity and water consumption, whilst providing them with actionable tips. By giving quantitative measures of the amount of energy used in electricity and water consumption, we aim to have families try to increase their efficiency, enabling them to take the steps to save energy. The actionable tips also provide clear next steps of what might help them lower energy consumption.

Audience

Families with 2+ kids have a lot of uses for electricity and water. Baths, showers, laundry, shared mealtimes and other household activities are in abundance. Because of this, a lot of energy is used, and this usage is not often monitored. Their motivations might be to partake in environmental stewardship and to save time. They might be concerned with the learning curve of the app.

Some articles we looked at in order to validate our findings were:

Influences of Indirect Lifestyle Aspects and Climate on Household Energy Consumption

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3130/jaabe.6.395

The larger the household, the more energy consumed but generally less per person because shared spaces and appliances.

U.S. household energy consumption and intensity trends: A decomposition approach

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421512004363

Permeance of technology increased electricity consumption, USA living space for families increased on average

The former is not relevant to our supposed familiarity with western living ideals and standards; work-home life balance and average living space in Japan differs wildly from the U.S. and Canada. The latter proves trends in energy consumption over several decades which is irrelevant as well.