Home Energy Monitoring - Documentation

The Joule Jotter DESIGN FOR

SOCIETIES IN TRANSITION

CONTENTS Acknowledgements......................................................................................................1 PHASE ONE: IMMERSION & EXPLORATION Understanding the Brief.................................................................................................5 Vision and Problem Statement......................................................................................7 Secondary Research ......................................................................................................9 Primary Research...........................................................................................................11 Insights............................................................................................................................13

PHASE TWO: IDEATION & CONCEPTUALISATION Opportunity Space.........................................................................................................16 Character Profiles..........................................................................................................18 Group Brainstorming.....................................................................................................20 100 ideas in 2 hours.....................................................................................................22 Open Card Sorting..........................................................................................................30 Clustering.......................................................................................................................32 Restating The Opportunity Space...............................................................................34 Three Levels of Data.....................................................................................................36 Concept Scenarios........................................................................................................38 Final Concept.................................................................................................................45 Future Scope Concept..................................................................................................46

PHASE THREE: VALIDATION & DEMONSTRATION Design Space & Rationale.............................................................................................51 User Experience Blueprint.............................................................................................53 Task Flow Model and IA..................................................................................................57 Sketching & Wireframing..............................................................................................59 Visual Design...................................................................................................................61 User Validation................................................................................................................63 Visual Design Rationale.................................................................................................64 Final Demonstration......................................................................................................67

Conclusion ...........................................................................................................68 Reflection.............................................................................................................69

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Project: Design For Societies in Transition Cluster: Design for Business The Joule Jotter Project: Design Documentation

by Sanika Sahasrabuddhe (PDP 401) Faculty: Dr. Girish Prabhu Dr. Naveen Bagalkot S-Labs, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology Client: Dr. Jay Warrior Dr. Sieglinde Pfaendler Robert Bosh Centre For Cyber Physical Systems, IISc Co-Students: Kushal Sanghavi Prakhar Ojha Engineer: Tejas Pande, IISc

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PHASE ONE

IMMERSION & EXPLORATION

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Product- ecology model

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Introduction: Understanding the Brief The project began with a technology. Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber Physical System with Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore was developing a technology that can monitor household electricity consumption.

Our role as designers was to explore and expand this rudimentary technology so that it becomes a part of the household. The goal of the project was to improve the Joule Jotter technology with aesthetic value, definitive functionality and a holistic experience to turn it into a full-fledged product-service model. The focus is not only on the tangible design and the interface of the feedback devices, but also on the entire environment (ecology) around it. The experience of using the technology must give the user a motive to engage with such a device. The design must fit well with current aesthetics of Indian households in terms of the household ecology and existing systems, while the technology should be easily approachable and quickly applicable.

The context of the project envisions a mid to high-income group of the Indian urban setting as the target audience. This demographic includes nuclear as well as joint families living in independent houses or apartments, who are acquainted with Smartphone technology. The experience of self-monitoring energy, could lead to the user eventually altering his choices and consumption.

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Vision and Problem Statement Vision Statement

To bring a product-service for Indian homes that provides power monitoring for users to make decisions around its usage and consumption.

Problem Statement

The current power distribution system does not provide opportunities to the consumers to monitor their usage and regulate their household appliances in order to use the energy efficiently and responsibly.

After gaining an understanding of the context, we found that the nature of the electricity supply service itself makes the consumers to take it for granted. When our groceries get over, we have to go out and buy them to replenish their stock at home. With electricity, the only responsibility of the user is timely payment of bills to ensure a continuous supply. Most urban settings also provide robust power back ups. Such amenities lead to users’ ignorance and hence to unawareness and inefficient use of electricity. Not many steps have been taken from either service providers or consumers to fill this gap.

One of our prime motives (vision) was looking at conservation of energy. Although we knew that actively conserving energy has always been a challenge, when exploring ‘electricity monitoring’, it is a theme that recurs in the thinking process. As the research progressed and we got a clear picture of the problem space we are dealing with, we got to know what areas to impact in order to achieve our prime motive. Along with conservation of energy, users’ monetary saving was an area that could have potential design intervention.

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Competitor’s products arranged on parameters of installation time and price.

The bottom left quadrant contains benchmarks

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Secondary Research During the secondary research, we looked at current market of energy metersin India and across the world. We found out how the word “household energy� defers for Indian setup and other countries. There are smart meters available in first world countries which are connected at the mains of houses and help to use the energy efficiently which can lead to proper home planning and budgeting. But none of these product-services are available in India. There is no benchmark in Indian market to compete with. Although there are energy meters but they are basic and doesn’t provide any experiential interactivity Product Space to the users.

Product Space Product Space

Benchmarks

Benchmarks Benchmarks

Product Space defined as per a range of existing products with varying functions

Service and platform overheating protection 4700

Service and platform overheating protection 4700

Service and platform overheating protection 4700

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Primary Research The interviews contained an array of questions that would help us familiarise to the routines and nuances of Indian urban households, as defined in the brief. The goal of this phase of research was to to bring Joule Jotter in the ecosystem of Indian homes. The objectives were as follows: 1. To understand user’s take on household energy consumption and distribution.

2. To understand the user’s relationship and involvement with household electric appliances and electrical services.

3. To understand the relevance of Joule Jotter for Indian households.

Observations and quotes from every interview were presented asvisual maps

The icons show the areas chosen before conducting primary research interviews

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Insights Insights are observations or data points tied with a potential design opportunity.

Insights bridge the immersion phase with ideation. In user-centered design, insights are important to resolve real pain points that people experience. Ideally, the design concept should address most if not all insights collected to be more relevant.

These insights were derived from both primary and secondary research.

There is a need for the space/platform, which can provide consumers with opportunities to trigger conversation about their electricity services and their concerns.

There is a need for efficient and reliable platform, which provides users with data about electricity usage, which can facilitate them to take appropriate actions around the electricity

The users want justification fortheir electricity bills.

Currently,the information provided to them about their consumption is not lucid.

There is a scope to promote energy conservation in users by translating their general awareness into self-awareness by providing them with valid data.

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The current setup of Indian households is complex; in terms of appliance cluster, wire cutter, plug points, extension cords and multi-plugs. The design (of the Joule Jotter) should satisfy their needs/extend their abilities and not add to the current complexity of appliance setup in Indian households.

There are no products or services in the Indian market that expand the user’s mental model to encourage interactivity with electricity services

The current nature of electrical service in India makes the user take it for granted. The service providers do not take efforts to introduce additional services and facilities to increase user’s engagement. There is a need to change this attitude of both, the user and service provider.

Users do not play an active role in looking after the services and the health of their appliances. There is a need for a feedback channel, which keeps the users updated with the health of their appliances to optimize the electricity consumption.

There is a need for feedbacks about the status of electricity supply to the user,i.e., when the power supply comes from the back power systems.

There is a need to generate involvement within the family ofthe user in matters of electricity

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PHASE TWO

IDEATION & CONCEPTUALISATION

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Opportunity Space Giving users a space/opportunity to have interactions about electricity and verify their consumption People, activities and objects define the ecology of a household. Some activities are carried out individually while others have a certain level of interaction. Understanding how often and when users interact with other users or objects, within the household and outside it, will be a starting point to create an experience to build interactions around specific activities and subsets of the household.

Electrical appliances and users’ activities are important factors to consider while creating a service for better interaction opportunities. These interactions may include user-user interactions, user-appliance interactions or appliance-appliance interactions.

The Joule Jotter will be the key factor in the proposed platform that triggers interactions around household electricity.

“I asked my friend and she said her bill was 1500/-“ “But sometimes when the bill hikes, we don’t understand what made it rise so much” “When you have some free time in the office (you can pay the bill online)” “You know sometimes I wonder... I’ve seen bills of all the others..”

“Do you think you pay more than you consume?” “We don’t really know...”

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The opportunity space for further immersion and ideation came from a combination of primary research and study of existing trends, products and services in smarthomes and home electricity monitoring.

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Character Profiles The process of ideation and conceptualization began by starting wit the user itself. The set of families interviewed by us had certain recognizable characteristics that made them similar to or different from each other. Some families for example, use Bangalore one to pay electricity bills while some others use the Bescom Online Payment Service. Another instances of behaviors or habits is: some families all members involved and aware of electricity usage, while in most families only the member who pays bills is aware of electricity usage.

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The scope of this project focuses on the family as a user, as opposed to an indivudual user.

Instead of creating a ‘persona’ I created a character profile for the family. This helped to have an image of a family to begin the ideation phase.

Overall, the user group is as varied as it is similar. In terms of similarity, most homes have active electricity use during mornings and evenings. Families associate certain appliances with certain times of the day. Using traits shown above, I grouped the families along various spectrums with extreme habits at the ends. This is illustrated in the diagram above.

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Group Brainstorming The insights gained from primary and secondary research were used as basis for a session of group brainstorming. A range of bizarre to feasible ideas came out of the brainstorming session. The group comprised of 4 members and 2 techniques were used: #1 All the 10 insights were taken up one by one, and used a guide to generate ideas by every member individually. #2 Brainwriting: An idea inspired from an insight was written down by one member and passed on to the next member to build upon it and evolve the idea.

The group brainstorming session was fairly successful, because it provided a skeleton of ideas some of which were a valuable inspiration while building the final concept.

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100 ideas in 2 hours This tool was a way to put out all the ideas out on paper without judgement or constraints of feasibility. Ideas that emerged during this exercise, were bizarre, futuristic, interactive, and divergent to encompass all possibilities. Though I was unsuccessful in getting 100 ideas in two hours, more time spent brought more ideas.

I undertook more than one, two-hours sessions.

By this time in the project, I knew my approach would revolve around interaction and interface design. However the ideas included instances of physical product design as well as of service design. Due to this approach, the ideation helped to visualize the Joule Jotter as a holistic product-service instead of only interfaces.

Divergent thinking is defined a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. In my opinion for an concept such as the Joule Jotter. This method of thinking helps tremendously in enabling one to think of all aspects and forms and really understand how all disciplines like product design, experience design, service design complement each other.

Tools for ideation: Force Fit Swiping Breaks The Rules

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Open Card Sorting Having done the rapid ideation, one could see themes emerge that would lead to a concept.

‘Open Card Sorting’ is a tool that helps cluster their ideas intuitively based on similarities or differences rather than defined categories first and then force-fitting ideas into them. For instance, ‘interfaces in significant or most-accessible places or collective activities in the home’ was a theme that encompassed many ideas under it, such as a display/interface on the fridge (accessible) that gives summarized data or an aesthetic piece at the dinner table (activity) to trigger discussion.

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Clustering Clusters were forerunners of concepts. A group of similar ideas formed the concept-clusters.

This stage was the most lengthy since many ideas had many similarities and could be grouped in many ways. The clustering became more complex as more categories were added.

Since ‘Open Card Sorting’ was employed the clustered were named after the actual grouping of the ideas.

Final clusters presented for mid-process review:

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The above images is of the ideas clustered the third time into 19 themes/categories.

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Restating The Opportunity Space The opportunity space defined the area of exploration, but it was necessary to elucidate the statement further. The initial opportunity space as stated was very broad, that was suited to inspire divergent thinking but needed narrowing down in order to start converging towards concepts. Interaction was still the central idea but the new statement was more definitive The opportunity area was more made more specific by revisiting the insights and throwing light on the painpoints, concerns and investments of the user to make the Joule Jotter user-centric.

The redefined opportunity space:

Creating opportunities for users to gain information about electricity to warrant for consumption.

Here the opportunity space is restated and the clusters (concepts) are narrowed down to 3 (blue post-its) while the green post-its show key features that also came from ideation.

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OPPORTUNITIES: People interact with friends and family in home and other spaces and speak about electricity, bills, decision-making etc.

The design allows user to get lucid feedback

Monitoring becomes an activities that blends well with other daily activities of the user’s routine.

The users must be able to control appliances as and when they like without much hinderance in daily routine.

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Three Levels Of Data When it comes to electricity as a utility we pay for, there are certain types of information that create more impact than others. For instance, depicting information as ‘money spent’ creates a much different impact from ‘time spent (usage time). Also, different members of the family may have his/her own choice of what type of data they wish to see (summarized or detailed).

These levels of data provide that choice.

Electricity consumption, monitoring and usage mean a lot of data. The challenge of the Joule Jotter interface is to turn the data into lucid information. Ideally information should unfold as per the users choice and not overload the user all at once.

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NOTE ‘Sharing with the Community’ was a concept that stuck around for a long time. An example I saw greatly inspired me to make have a concept that makes electricity a community resource, looking at the community and not the individual to be the smallest unit. This concept is low on technology. But it is in sync with ideas about sharing economy that are prevelant. I proposed a Community Box that you can add your resources to. This could be appliances you haven’t been using, that you can share with a neighbour or more intangible things like two-hours of wi-fi. It has a social element to it where people can interact about electricity usage etc. as well. This concept does not resonate as well with insights or the market analysis, but I believe it can have a substantial impact over a long time. Through such an intervention one can address the bigger picture of ‘community sharing’ and electricity management is a subset of the larger frame.

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Concept Scenarios As a designer, visual thinking and communication are essential. Developing user scenarios is an important tool that gives a framework of the context of design intervention. Visualising scenarios introduces the new product or technology ease into the life of the user, and make it’s use relatable and not cumbersome.

Scenario building expands moments in the users’ routine into stories that elucidate the need and place of the design concept in question. This tool can explore the feasibility of a new design in the users’ existing environment.

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The Joule Jotter project is based on product ecology, which means that a new object or product changes the entire dynamic of the environment it is introduced to.

In my opinion, an ideal design is one that becomes a part of the ecology with least turbulence and most responsiveness or impact.

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Concept Scenarios, showing different features being used in daily routine. While scenarios #3 and #5 are for the near future, #4 is feasible with the current Joule Jotter technology.

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Sketches and wireframes of ideas to expand the early concept and beginning to visualise interfaces and interactions for mobile devices.

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One feature sometimes has more than one of being represented on a screen or interface visually so does flow of information

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set a reminder for the geyser!

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Final Concept Feedback from electric appliances (enabled by the Joule Jotter smartplugs) on mobile, other handheld and laptop/computer devices through time-based or temporal monitoring and control.

The interface for the Joule Jotter application is designed to engage the user to create active involvement with electric applications in his/her house. In order to offer a log of the real time consumption of the household, the joule jotter uses the time of the day as a frame to display information about various devices around the house. Users tend to associate certain appliances to certain times of the day. For instance, most of them use the washing machine or geysers during mornings while television is associated with evening time. Not only that, but time is also key factor in comparing usage between different appliances Time-based monitoring is a valid proposition as time is an effective parameter to gauge and understand electricity usage. Units, costs and savings are associated largely to time. Time based applications in mobile devices are associated to scheduling, monitoring and reminders. These features when tied with an application that displays and warrants for consumption serves a fuller experience for users looking to monitor home electricity.

Bill Reading and initial registration For the initial version of the Joule Jotter, a log (one-time) of non-pluggable loads and previous bill units can be features that improve the estimation of a Joule Jotter log to compare with the bill from the utility provider. Addressing the issue that users face regarding the tentativeness about the electricity bill, the Joule Jotter provides its own log of electricity data providing a bill of its own for the user to have a true footprint to warrant for consumption.

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Concept for Future An independent display that can be placed around busy and accessible areas of the home. A fridge magnet with a display that shows a summary of home electricity, makes for accessible information in common areas of the house.

A home screen that proves as an additional interface could be a useful touchpoint to give summarized data. For on-the-go features, it could be the primary unit that communicates and connects outside home to inside; as well as a platform for family discussions and decision making.

Design & Usage The Joule Jotter is one of many device-based Home Energy Management solutions in the market. A lot of these products are tedious and complex. More over for Indian users (mid-high income) the design has to tackle the infrastructure to provide a worthwhile experience. In a lifestyle that encompasses spending most hours working outside the household, knowing the status of one’s household could serve as a useful value addition to the Joule Jotter. This functionality is not only to keep a check on the household but also to tether it to a device that the user can remote control.

Trends Insights from market analysis show that users won’t spend much time in installing and decoding the software. Thus, the software must be extremely lucid and easy to navigate and a quick one-time endeavour. Demand Response is a term that entails the changes that a product can bring about in the behaviour of the user. In the case of the Joule Jotter, with information about electricity usage and costs, ideally, the user is motivated to shift his consumption habits. For such a shift to happen, it is essential that the product is engaging and involving enough for the time that it takes to actually see the behaviour change.

Business Model The Joule Jotter can be made more sellable by selling it as an add on to electric appliances. While the Joule Jotter would extrapolate a lot of data about home electricity, data management can also be made a point of profit

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On-the-go mobile device to communicate with a central display to remote control home electricity.

PHASE THREE

VALIDATION & DEMONSTRATION

Design Space and Rationale The arena of electricity utilities, supply, distribution and consumption is vast. With such a large system running, the most effective point of intervention is the front use of the electricity utility. By this, I mean, we focus on electricity that is supplied to the house as a touch point to begin the design intervention (and the part of the electricity system the user interacts with).

The service uses relevant information provided by utility companies, to help users calculate, visualize and validate their personal consumption in their own home environments.

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When a product provides data, user interfaces are an effective form to integrate the product with, so that information can be dispensed properly. The Joule Jotter smart plug, as it is in its first version, integrates with an Android Smartphone application to provide data to the user.

The initial goal of the is to make this product marketable and cost effective, in its first version, so people begin to use it. With grown familiarity towards the product, it is then possible to introduce more artifacts with state-of-the-art technology to make the product experience better. With this in mind, I formulated two concepts after the Ideation Phase.

Concept 1: An independent display that can be placed around busy and accessible areas of the home. A fridge magnet with a display that shows a summary of home electricity, makes for accessible information in common areas of the house.

Concept 2: Feedback from electric appliances (enabled by the Joule Jotter smartplugs) on mobile, other handheld and laptop/computer devices through time-based or temporal monitoring and control.

Concept 2 is one that harnesses existing technology and products to deliver information.

Hence, users are familiar to the artifacts that would be in use and creating digital products for existing platforms is more cost-effective that building new products and interfaces. By this rationale, the second concept was a better choice for the first version of the Joule Jotter product. Concept 1 can be effectively integrated to support Concept 2 towards a better experience, once users build trust and familiarity with the product.

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User Experience Blueprint Converging from ideas towards feasible concepts meant to test these concepts for the values that we had defined for our product-service model. These values were: Ease of use and installation, cost-effectiveness, aesthetic appeal and lucidity of information.

A User Experience(UX) blueprint is a way to map out the entire scenario of where the productservice will be introduced. As a designer, I map out goals and principles for my product-service, taking into consideration the environment and psyche of the user.

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An instance of this is defining UX opportunities. Let’s take a scenario where Fawad, a young bachelor has bought a few Joule Jotter plugs to monitor his appliances. Fawad is new to the working of the product. He would want a guide to help him install the Joule Jotter (app and plug). He also might be thinking that he does not want to spend too much time on installing this product, but wants to get to using it soon.

As per this scenario, providing the user with a User Manual/ Installation Guide is a perfectly valid UX opportunity. I must identify various such instances to provide opportunity (that are driven by a requirement) for users to interact with the product.

The final blueprint has UX goals, UX principles, phases, activities, artifacts, thinking and emotion as categories to draft the customer journey. The User Experience blueprint I created was a visual that employed the user’s environment (In the Joule Jotter product service, the product environment is of key importance) as a base to arrange the above-mentioned parameters.

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The boxes at the top of this task flow model are the goals. the verbs in the black-outlined bubbles are tasks while the orange-circled ones are subtasks.

For example: ‘User should be informed about his electricity in realtime’ is a goal.

‘Inform about slab jump’ is a task while ‘Set notification’ is a sub-task.

The green-circled text denotes ways in which the particular sub-task (and the information it entails) can be visualised on screen.

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Task Flow Model and Information Architecture (IA) Information and Tasks are parameters to classify affordances of mobile applications. The Joule Jotter application provides information about electricity units spent, costs and bill tariff slabs while it undertakes tasks such as monitoring (timebased), controlling and assisting with bills. Information is pretty much interwoven into the tasks of the app and hence defining task flow and IA were simultaneous processes.

The Task flow diagram contains UX goals defined in the blueprint. Each UX goal has tasks and sub-tasks that collectively define the scope the application. Tasks are actions carried out by the user or indications for the user and goals are defined by the designer and are behind the line of visibility. This diagram is somewhat an inverted tree diagram with all affordances (functionality) stated. This tool is useful to define hierarchy for the application/service; certain tasks have more hierarchy than others. .

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Wireframes to decide not only layout and arrangement but also flow and hierarchy.

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Sketching and Wireframing The task flow model helps to rapid-sketch and create wireframes. This phase is also where I could explore many ideas, iterations and visualisations to depict information. While designing a way to show time-based data, I chose day, week and month. Intuitively, we relate a week to a line (linear), a day to a circle (analog clock) and a month to a rectangle of rows and columns.

I translated this directly to depict the different levels of data so each type of temporal data has it’s own identity.

During, the ideation phase, one of the ideas was that of an interactive clock that tracks the appliance as time passes. But that idea was easily translatable to a mobile device’s virtual clock. The idea of this application could be translated to household products like calendars and timepieces with intelligence.

Wireframing involves envisioning the flow of screens and hierarchy of functions. While doing this I engaged and applied the intricacies of UI guidelines defined for Android phones. In many instances, Visual Design and Wire-framing overlapped while sticking to UI guidelines. Certain visual designs are identified quickly with certain functions. An example of this is a tab. Users can quickly swipe through tabs to see different types of information. The Action Bar is constant throughout all screens. The action bar navigates the users to all the different features of the Application, hence providing quick accessibility.

Sketching an iterating to create wireframes

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Screens created with visual design elements. Above shown screens are the control, bill and monitor feature.

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Visual Design Visual Design includes colour, typography and iconography. My aim during visual design was to try to be frugal with visual elements. The use of colour is functional. For example, the action bar in the Joule Jotter App changes colour according to the feature being used (turquoise for Control, red for Monitor etc.). Overtime, the user would associate a particular colour to a function/feature. In daily monitoring, I have used color-coding to identify appliances from one another. These colours appear in the Settings-Control screen so the user starts to identify these colors with the specified appliance. The colour green with its shades tints is used to depict bill tariff slab information across all screens. Every place the colour green appears, the user can assume the information to be related to tariff slabs.

The font family Roboto has been specified by Android. It is a versatile font and has a lot of variationsIcons used were outline-styled. They look sleek and not bulky. Even on a small scale, this style will not clutter space. Visual elements helped to explore the basic wireframes further, with iterations of transitions and gestures and color and text application.

Colour and Icon Set used for theJoule Jotter Mobile Application

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Users interaction with different iterations of screens and providing feedback.

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User Validation with Paper Prototypes User Testing was performed with 4 users. The main intent of the user testing was to see how the user reacts to visuals and structure of each mock screen. Some screen visualisations has different options. They were asked to choose between options of visuals that they felt more comfortable with. Paper Prototypes were used to represent the high-fidelity technology of the mobile application. This helped to see the screens simultaneously, enabling more effective viewing for feedback. I, as a conductor of the user testing, played the part that technology would. When the user tapped on something that was intended to be an interaction touchpoint, I changed introuced the next screen.

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Visual Design Rationale The users were expected to make choices about what visual they recognised better. For example, the visualization that showed daily consumption had two options: a clock-based tracking or device-wise data with a circle for each device. 3 out 4 users preferred the visualization that used a clock for depiction

Choices to represent daily consumption data

Using one of the representations while zooming into a day in a month

Design rationale: The concept is about time-based consumption. Using a clock-based visualization is synchronous with the concept. The other concept gives more ‘device-based’ than ‘time-based’ data. However, if the user wants to see a day’s consumption through the month, he would more likely be interested in device-wise data than daytime-wise data. With this thought, I retained the clock-based information for daily data. And used the circular-bubble representation of device-wise data inside the monthly consumption level.

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Screens from the Joule Jotter Mobile App

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The app screen image on phone to see ease and accessibility of interaction.

This is the section for daily monitoring using a clock to show appliance-use time.

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Final Demonstration

Prototyping on InVision and screen image on mobile phone

Invision is an online web-application that turns images to an effectively demonstrative prototype. After user testing with paper prototypes, and taking decisions, a digital prototype gives an understanding of the screen-space and ergonomic accessibility while the user is interacting with the mobile application.For an application that is envisioned to serve on various platforms, the final demonstration was a mobile app click-through protoype. With a total of about 50 screens, the prototype includes, various entry-points to the different functions in the application. The prototype is purely design-based and has no use of programming. The prototype serves to gauge user interaction and functional aesthetics of the visual design.

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Conclusion A product-service model is not a one-person job. The User Interaction and Experience Design is only a portion of a multi-tiered framework. The mobile application is only a look at a service that entails many more products and artifacts to make it robust. Applications that run on and off the web, on computers and handheld devices and a back-end server that stores and processes many levels of consumption data are examples of touchpoints that can expand this service. With a business model that make place for all the offerings of the service, it can be taken forward to be made profitable.

The mobile application by itself is obsolete. An efficient Smartplug that monitors and control the users valued home appliances is the better half of the product-service. Integrating the Smartplug that fits well with Indian aesthetics and home spaces with the Joule Jotter App will make for a helpful product that makes users give their electricity consumption a second glance.

The present outcome is based on design thinking processes to deliver according to the client brief. We could say that business and market stakes could affect design iterations to make the Joule Jotter market-ready

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Reflection The most cardinal rule of designing for people that I learnt was to shed any and every assumption. While this project is titled ‘Design for Societies in Transition’, the only way to make useful design is to let is evolve and not latch on to anything before inspecting it thoroughly. A process-intensive course such as this one is extremely valuable to look at how goals and problems keep shifting as we immerse further into nuances of the user scenario. The technology was the starting point of this project. As designers, understanding the life, scope and function of this technology and accordingly integrate feasibility into it, was the overarching design challenge.

Such design for people and societies demands altruism as much as it demands looking at oneself for inspiration to tell a story.

This project was my first experience designing for a client with a technology offering. Unlike previous projects, this was a helpful space to learn to think objectively and methodically and also to organize thoughts for the right place, time and phase. I learnt that good storytelling makes a concept approachable and inspirational to take it further. The story, experience and knowing how I got to the end is always more synergetic than the end product.

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The Joule Jotter Project Sanika Sahasrabuddhe

2014