IDEA: A software toolkit for energy awareness

Abstract

ABSTRACT High electricity and water expenditure constitute a significant issue, as recent statistics demonstrate the continuous increase in energy consumption in the European Union (EU). This results in environmental, financial, and social issues. One such major issue is energy poverty. Software tools can influence users’ behavior, enabling them to improve certain situations and enhance their awareness and education around important topics. Such tools must also be usable and offer a positive user experience. In this context, a set of 15 innovative ICT tools were created under the Erasmus+ EU-funded project IDEA: “Innovative Direction in Energy Advising,” aiming, on the one hand, to assist individuals in decreasing their households’ electricity and water consumption through the development of energy awareness, and on the other hand, to help energy experts in their fight against energy poverty. Our previous work presented an overall brief view of the 15 ICT tools. In this work, we focus on the two core sets of tools. We present (i) the software engineering process we followed toward developing the tools, including a detailed needs analysis and important design and development aspects of the tools, as well as the final product; and (ii) a user evaluation from the perspectives of usability and user experience, during which quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed, followed by a presentation of the analysis conducted and discussion of the results. We concluded that energy experts felt that the IDEA toolkit appears very useful in comparison to what they are currently using. In regards to the wider audience, participants’ experience satisfaction (Water Tool (WT) (93%), Lighting Tool (LT) (86%), and Heating Tool (HT) (81%)), and usefulness of the tools (WT (86%), LT (83%), HT (76%)) were highly rated.