This week, a KMi’s paper led by Lara Schibelsky Godoy Piccolo received the best paper award at IHC 2014, the third Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computer Systems.

KMi’s paper "Energy Consumption Awareness in the Workplace: Technical Artefacts and Practices" presented a study evaluating the role of three different technologies to promote energy awareness in a research workplace: a debate tool, smart monitors, and a tangible device to motivate engagement (an energy tree).

The analysis of the role of each technology considered assessments and interviews, and also the content of the online discussion, which encompassed more than 170 ideas for changing behaviour for around 100 issues about how the energy has been consumed. Results demonstrated that for raising energy awareness, beyond technology, it is also necessary to deal with formal and informal elements, such as institutional practices and individual’s motivation.

This paper is the result of a joint effort between two different European Projects, CATALYST (http://catalyst-fp7.eu/) and DecarboNet (http://www.decarbonet.eu/), led by two different units within KMi, which has proven to be a very fruitful and successful collaboration!