Revealing and Reducing Workplace Energy Consumption Through Digital Interventions Event

The talk describes an RCUK-funded Ctech project which aims to identify effective socio-technical measures, built on data generated by buildings and occupants, that might be employed in a workplace to enable staff to actively reduce its carbon footprint. This talk will introduce this interdisciplinary project, and present the on-going Computer Science research. On one hand, we will show how a participatory approach – involving managers and office-workers in data exploration and design tasks – has exposed operational “errors” and political tensions. On the other, we will demonstrate how the deployment of provocative technology probes help us to understand the social implications of introducing new technologies into the workplace.

Dr Ben Bedwell and James Colley are both members of The University of Nottingham. Dr Bedwell is based at the Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute, where he applies participatory design methods to explore solutions to reduce energy use in homes and workplaces. James Colley has recently completed his doctoral research in the Mixed Reality Lab, studying the technological and social challenges that arise from person centric representations of energy consumption.