Toward the Design of a Dashboard to Promote Environmentally Sustainable Behavior among Office Workers

In the United States, over three billion dollars are spent due to office equipment being left on when not in use during the weekend and at night. There is very little incentive for office workers to save energy because utility bills are not directly their responsibility. Our goal is to find ways to reduce the negative impact of this pervasive phenomenon by applying persuasive technologies to create awareness and encourage office workers towards more environmentally sustainable behavior. To this end, we conducted a literature review to investigate the persuasive methods appropriate to the field of building controls. We then proceeded to develop "dashboard-controllers" that enable office workers to control energy-using components with expert feedback to save energy.