Water is both a global and a local resource. The stuff is all over the place. Fills lakes, rivers, seas, oceans; but not all of it is fit for human consumption. For our users, change is difficult. People require motivation or incentives, and even then it doesn’t make change easy. Many everyday actions waste water. Showers, cleaning dishes, washing clothes, brushing your teeth...
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In one sense, water is always a global resource; it always moves from one place to another. In another sense, water is highly local: regular movement patterns form the foundation of local ecology, and only so much water is available in one area through the natural movement of water. In the design of a device, feedback provides context for measuring one’s actions. If you are trying to change your behavior, information about the effects of your changes helps you reach your goals. But what if your users don't have any goals...and don't care altogether? Freshwater only makes up less than 3% of water on earth. Water conservation is an important issue.
"Design an object, interface, system, or service intended to support the idea of utilizing or consuming local resources rather than global resources, in a sustainable and environmentally efficient manner."
Our user group was apartment renters in the Bloomington, IN area. At local Bloomington apartments many tenants don’t have to pay a water bill, and have no incentive to save or even track their water usage. Hundreds of gallons of water may be wasted every month in these apartments.
Our goal was to design a device to be sustainable, and to support the utilization of local water supplies. Considering our user group, we wanted our design to allow water preservation with little or no effort on the part of our users.
Our users used more water than they needed. Many Bloomington renters who don’t pay a water bill don’t have any incentives to conserve water. They will not change easily. Most places that have enough water now may not have enough water in the future. Are we doing enough to resolve this problem?
Context, People, Time, Technology, User Environment, Mindsets of Users.
With this design, we argued, people who don’t have to mess with their water temperature before getting into the shower would waste less water. The '' would cut out the time between starting the water running and getting in the shower. Our design focused on just conserving water in the shower, but the lessons learned from this design could be implemented in many other ways--around the house, or even in other contexts. The 'Simple Shower' makes our user's lives easier, while also saving water. This design cuts out any need for motivation and incentive, which is lacking from our user group anyway. Reducing shower time by 1 minute can save nearly 700 gallons a month . |
