Abstract
Fuel poverty is a critical issue for a globally ageing population. Longer heating/cooling requirements combine with declining incomes to create a problem in need of urgent attention. One solution is to deploy technology to help elderly users feel informed about their energy use, and empowered to take steps to make it more cost effective and efficient. This study subjects a broad cross section of energy monitoring and home automation products to a formal ergonomic analysis. A high level task analysis was used to guide a product walk through, and a toolkit approach was used thereafter to drive out further insights. The findings reveal a number of serious usability issues which prevent these products from successfully accessing an important target demographic and associated energy saving and fuel poverty outcomes. Design principles and examples are distilled from the research to enable practitioners to translate the underlying research into high quality design-engineering solutions.
Highlights
This paper reports on an assessment of the behavioural and usability aspects of a range of commercially available home energy saving technologies, and their ability to benefit ageing populations in this way
A range of attitudes towards home energy saving technology was revealed in the analyses, which the personas try to capture
It is important to note that this sample of products were chosen on a purely opportunity basis from normal retailers. They are not representative of specially selected ‘worst case’ examples; they are a broad cross-section of energy saving products available for elderly people to purchase at the current time
Summary
Fuel poverty is the confluence of several key research grand challenges. It is brought about by poor energy efficiency, in particular the thermal efficiency of housing stock and heating sources; low household income; and high fuel costs. These in turn reflect back on national energy mixes, the drive towards renewables, and even the geo-politics of an increasingly globalised and interconnected world economy. In Scotland, where this study was conducted, a household is in fuel poverty if it requires more than 10% of its income to be spent on household fuel use in order to maintain a satisfactory heating regime. The Scottish and UK Governments have set aggressive targets for tackling this important issue
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