Erratic Appliances and Energy Awareness

Abstract

We are exploring how to increase energy awareness through critical interaction design by creating objects that in various ways expose issues related to energy consumption. To raise energy from not only being a technical solution in everyday life, we try to find new ways of relating to energy in design and to uncover the properties of energy as design material. To learn more about how energy can be made more present in product design, we have been re­designing a series of everyday objects around the theme of 'Erratic Appliances'. As household energy consumption increases, the appliances start to behave strangely. These appliances are also meant to embody relations between one's actions and often rather negative global effects of energy consumption.