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On the Discourse of Energy as Material: Future Feedback Technologies and Directions for Experiencing Energy

Engineers are increasingly considering the social dimensions of energy use in the design of energy conservation technologies. This has led to design informed by ethnographic and theoretical inquiry on everyday energy practices and user-technology interactions that will in turn shape future practices and interactions. This paper contributes to the small but growing literature on real-time residential energy feedback displays that more closely examines how users experience such technologies. Survey responses from participants involved in a large-scale residential energy feedback monitoring case study are analyzed and contextualized into a set of positive and negative user “experiences.” The qualitative data derived from these responses add new insight on the social variables of user interaction with real-time feedback monitors that are of use to both the study of energy feedback monitoring and the design of future smart communities. Finally, an example is given of how these participant “experiences” are being put to the test in the design of a new energy feedback technology with implications for future ways of conceptualizing energy.