Project Description
Researcher Elizabeth Shove demonstrated that, “consumer expectations of comfort, cleanliness and convenience have altered radically” recently, but that we have not always noticed or understood what these changes mean in terms of consumption, decision-making, and other practices. Our relationships with the technologies we encounter on a daily basis often have far-reaching implications for other aspects of our lives. Kinetics, the study of the physical and habitual interaction of individuals with their environment, aims to shed light on the role of these issues and how they can potentially be affected through utility program design.
We seek to study how people interact on a daily basis with the goods and services that require energy to power or provide them. The introduction of new technologies prompts the development of new behaviors, habits, and even relationships with items in the environment (think iPhone). Using qualitative methods, which stress observation and focus on kinetics, we can discover emerging ways consumers interact with energy in their homes, businesses, and elsewhere. .