Visualization-assisted Insights into Home Energy Usage

• Main Authors: Law, Matthew, Rollins, Sami, Banerjee, Nilanjan, Joshi, Alark
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: The Eurographics Association 2015
• Subjects: H.1.2 [Information Systems]; User/Machine Systems; Human Information Processing; sami
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.2312/eurovisshort.20151131; https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/eurovisshort.20151131.091-095

Motivated by both cost savings and environmental concerns, managing energy in the home has become increasingly important. Though both user-driven and automated solutions have shown promise, a deeper understanding of the characteristics of energy usage behavior is necessary to inform the design of such systems. In this work, we present the results of a study that explores the insights and characteristics participants are able to derive using two well-known visualization techniques for time series data. We find that participants are able to extract a variety of relevant features and explain general and anomalous patterns of behavior. We also find that the preferred visualization is both user- and task-dependent. These findings may be used as the basis for new systems for home energy management. : Eurographics Conference on Visualization (EuroVis) - Short Papers : Design and Applications : 91 : 95 : Matthew Law, Sami Rollins, Nilanjan Banerjee, and Alark Joshi : Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): H.1.2 [Information Systems]: User/Machine Systems-Human Information Processing