Is it important that home metering devices comply with basic psychological needs for autonomy and relatedness? Usually designers focus on cognition, technical feasibility and style, and design of interfaces typically comes rather late in the process. But if metering is to benefit energy conservation and a more frugal lifestyle in general, cognitive and ecological approaches alone, may - despite their obvious importance - not do the trick.
Currently I am reading up on Deci & Ryan's so-called 'organismic' approach, which is about humans' need to feel autonomy as well as community. The empirical material Anne Marie Kanstrup and I have collected on user reactions to electricity metering in the home holds so many puzzling details, that it deserves more analysis, and a stronger theoretical underpinning of the analytical model.
Ideas relating to smart metering and smart grid technology are flowing abundantly at the moment, but little attention is given to socio-psychological and cultural-historical aspects: Humans have metered nature and resources like forever, and apart from the obvious reason of trying to predict and preserve living conditions, it is likely that this activity contributes to human development of both autonomy and community. Just as Gibson's concept of affordances offer designers conceptual guidance regarding how artifact can become a tool in the hands of humans, a better conceptualization of the role of the experience of household metering may improve chances that these systems can serve as regulating 'traffic lights.'
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