People’s domestic habits are increasingly being targeted to reduce levels of CO2 emissions. Whereas domestic energy consumption has received a lot of attention with several reported studies on sustainable practices, there are very few studies on workplace practices. Nevertheless, these are considered as having much potential for reducing energy consumption. This article presents the findings from two field studies where two different types of prototypes for visualizing energy use were designed, implemented and evaluated in different types of workplace settings -- factories and offices. The studies used design probes to explore how visual feedback for electricity use was interpreted and acted upon by employees in work settings. A striking observation was that it is very difficult to get people to change to more pro-environmental behavior and practices in a workplace environment. The article discusses why this might be the case.

The article presents a case study of a user-centred design process of an energy service to be used by households. This case study is used to explore the nature of participation of users in the design process. The purpose of the design was to create a prototype for an IT-based service to facilitate for households to learn about their electricity consumption and implicitly to reduce it. By applying methods from human–computer interaction (HCI) throughout the design process, we designed the digital prototype EnergyCoach. The final prototype of EnergyCoach is structured to visualise electricity consumption in households and to coach members of the household in learning about, and reducing their own consumption. The service is mediated through a combination of a web-based platform and one for the mobile phone. EnergyCoach was tested and evaluated in its intended context. Qualitative interviews were carried out with six households who tested the service for six months in their home environment. Results reveal that although the design of EnergyCoach was appreciated and the service as such considered useful, informants varied in how frequently they used it. Reasons to this are discussed and related to methods for early and later phases of the design process.

Smart electricity meters and home displays are being installed in people's homes with the assumption that households will make the necessary efforts to reduce their electricity consumption. However, present solutions do not sufficiently account for the social implications of design. There is a potential for greater savings if we can better understand how such designs affect behaviour. In this paper, we describe our design of an energy awareness artefact - the Energy AWARE Clock - and discuss it in relation to behavioural processes in the home. A user study is carried out to study the deployment of the prototype in real domestic contexts for three months. Results indicate that the Energy AWARE Clock played a significant role in drawing households' attention to their electricity use. It became a natural part of the household and conceptions of electricity became naturalized into informants' everyday language.

Increasing our knowledge of how design affects behaviour in the workplace has a large potential for reducing electricity consumption. This would be beneficial for the environment as well as for industry and society at large. In Western society energy use is hidden and for the great mass of consumers its consequences are poorly understood. In order to better understand how we can use design to increase awareness of electricity consumption in everyday life, we will discuss the design of Watt-Lite, a set of three oversized torches projecting real time energy statistics of a factory in the physical environments of its employees. The design of Watt-Lite is meant to explore ways of representing, understanding and interacting with electricity in industrial workspaces. We discuss three design inquiries and their implications for the design of Watt-Lite: the use of tangible statistics; exploratory interaction and transferred connotations.