Overview

Time: 1+years (project has been ongoing for ~2yrs)
Team: Part of SFU team.
Role: Interaction Designer (GUI team + Embedded Technologies team)

A collaborative project between Simon Fraser University (SFU), University of Waterloo, and Ryerson University to build a solar house for the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon 2009. The three universities make up "Team North".

SFU's participation includes a team from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) working on the Adaptive Living Interface System (ALIS). The aim of ALIS is to facilitate solar-powered living by supporting informed energy use decisions, and by transparently integrating energy consciousness into the daily routines of the residents – both inside and outside of the home. ALIS allows residents to control North House, and provides feedback and incentives through a set of distributed interfaces. These functions are available throughout the home across different platforms that are tailored to their location and intended use.

ALIS includes four interface components: i) the Ambient Canvas, ii) three Touch Control Panels, iii) a Desktop Web Application, and iv) an iPhone Application.
Each of these components was designed to address the different needs of the resident. Together, the various ALIS components are designed to reduce the complexity of solar-powered living and to encourage net-zero living by ubiquitously supporting the resident in energy use decisions throughout their daily life.

Process

Our team began with user research, observations, and workshops in the realm of sustainable living, solar house living, interviews and workshops with solar home owners and non-solar home owners. It was an iterative design process where we took our findings to produce mulitiple design possibilities and have refined them along the way. User tests and prototypes were also developed.
I worked on the Ambient Canvas and part of the desktop web application. For the web application I specically focused on and designed for the data visualation graphs and functionality. I worked on the graphical user interface mockups, specification and also our system mapping and journey framework.

Result

The Solar Decathalon competition was held October 9 - 18 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C
Our team placed 4th out of 20 competing teams.

--> Team North Website
--> Solar Decathlon 2009
SFU team: Ron Wakkary, Lyn Bartram, Robert Woodbury, Chris Brandson, Yin He, Rob MacKenzie, Kevin Muise, Johnny Rodgers, Alex Skibicki, Jason Boileau, Nathan Cheng, Carla Culos, Jody Dickerson, Jin Fan, Malahat Hosseini, Simon Kwok, Charles Law, Eric Lee, Andrew Liang, Karen Tanenbaum, Nathan Waddington, Vincent Wong.

Project images, GUI designs and documents:

GUI designs for energy forecasting and history:







Part of the Information Architecture Diagram:



Journey framework of the system: (click to view PDF)



Ambient Canvas (light backsplash shows energy usage/status) and Interface Panel