Evaluating Mobile Phones as Energy Consumption Feedback Devices 

Markus Weiss, Claire-Michelle Loock, Thorsten Staake, Friedemann Mattern, and 
Elgar Fleisch 

With smart electricity meters being widely deployed, data on residential 
energy usage is increasingly becoming available. To make sensible use of these 
data, we investigated the suitability of mobile phones as an interface to 
provide feedback on overall and device-related energy consumption. Based on 
the results of a user survey, we implemented the most highly valued feedback 
features on an iPhone that communicates with a smart meter. In a follow-up 
user study, we evaluated how users perceive the experience of such energy 
consumption feedback and how they rate the importance of different 
functionalities. Our work confirms the suitability of energy feedback 
delivered on a mobile phone. It outlines that a clear and easy to explain use 
case scenario is key and that knowledge-increasing functionalities as well as 
those functionalities from which monetary savings can be directly implied are 
perceived as most important. To address technophobe users, action-guiding 
feedback that goes beyond displaying aggregated information is required.