HEEP: Design iterations

This week after receiving more feedback from professor Johnson, we've made a few more changes to improve our applications. One change that was made, which affected all of our applications is the tab interface. We decided to removed the tab interface from our designs to give the web design company more freedom of implementing it on the page. Starting with the Negawatt application, we added a definition of a negawatt so users would know what a negawatt is, and we added more descriptions for the pie chart by adding in a legend. Below is a screenshot of the new negawatt application.



The next design change we've made was on the Top EnergyStar Model application. It's a small change suggested by Robert to rephrase the amount of money consumers can saved to the extra amount of money consumer will pay by NOT switching to an EnergyStar Model.



The Appliance calculator application that we've created was a good idea, but its an old idea and a version of it is already being used on the EnergyStar website. we tried to think of a way to apply it specifically to HEEP but we couldnt come up with anything so we decided to scrap that application.

A few other refinements that we've made were on the visualization applications. We decided to split the Energy Generation graph into 2 graphs to better represent what we're trying to show. The first of these graphs will show the projected energy consumption by percentage from each source and the second graph will show the energy consumption by its value from each source. We also added data for every year to make the graph look more proportional by years and an indicator line to show the beginning of the HCEI which will be used as the base value to meet HCEI's goal.



The final change we made was a small change to the Oil Consumption graph to change it to actual value rather than the difference between each year. This way it's easier for users to put large amount of oil that we're consuming into perspective.



We're hoping that after these changes, we can begin implementing prototypes for these applications. MileStone 2 is creeping up on us and we really want to have some deliverables to show the HEEP forks. Come back next week to hear the good news.

HEEP: Mocking up some changes

So last week, I've said I will keep you guys updated on my HEEP project. So we presented the ideas we've came up with to professor Johnson in our Thursdays meeting and the overall feedback was that it was good that we were thinking outside the box but some of the applications were a bit too complicated. Also as a developer, we should always give what the costumer ask for, such as the HEEP report card that we've replaced with the Appliance report card.

Since we were doing so much redesigning, professor Johnson advised us to make mockups of our applications rather than jumping straight into implementing it. It was a really good idea since looking at the mockups gave us a better idea of how some of the functionalities were seem be more confusing or bothersome than being useful.

So after another trip to the drawing board, These are some of the applications that we're came up with:

Negawatt Application: it displays the Negawatt generated by switching from a non-EnergyStar appliance to an energyStar. For those of you who dont know what a negawatt is, it's a term used to describe energy that was saved or not used by being energy efficient. So in our case, it was the energy from switching to an EnergyStar appliance. The pie chart will show the amount generated from each different types of appliance.


Top EnergyStar ModelsThis is a simple visualization that shows the top EnergyStar models with the energy usage difference and the amount of money saved compare to an average non-EnergyStar model. It also acts as a recommendation page for users to use when looking for a replacement.


Appliance Calculator:We simplify the calculator to make it require less user input. All that the user have to do now is select roughly how old their current fridge is and the style from the icons. Hit calculate and viola, they'll get a rough estimate of how much money their current model uses compare to new EnergyStar model. This makes the application easy enough for kids and grandmas to use.


Oil visualizations We made some slight changes to these visualization, In the energy consumption visualization, we added in the energy source of "conservation" which are negawatts or energy that we didnt use/need. These projected data goes hand and hand with the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative goals which states that 30% of the 70% clean energy will be energy that was saved. and for the Oil Consumption visualization, we changed it from a bar graph to a line graph.









We're still brainstorming on what to design for the HEEP report card and CDD applications. These applications are seriously giving us a hard time but it was requested by HEEP themselves so we have to come up with something to show them. Hopefully with more research, we'll think of something that is to their liking. Wish us luck.

HEEP- reaching the first milestone in the user's shoes

Entering the 4th week of our project and reaching our first milestone, I have to say that things have not been going according to our plans. Our initial notion that we got from the meeting with HEEP was to create a gadget that would display a "report card", "oil usage", and Cooling degree days". After getting some ideas on what to implement for each of these application, we requested for the necessary data from HEEP. Unfortunately, HEEP does not have the data that we needed at this moment, so we decided to generate our own data.

After our meeting with professor Johnson, we've realized that our implementation may not be the most practical considering that we're still not exactly sure on how they want to present those information. They know that they want a gadget that will display information to their users, but it may be that they themselves are still not 100% sure of what/how they want to do it at this moment.

So it was back to the drawing board and some critical thinking. But this time, we've removed the blinders and are thinking outside the box. We put ourselves in the user's shoes and thought of information that we want to see or use. Ideas started coming out since we stopped limiting ourselves to just using visualizations to present information. Some of these Ideas include:

• Appliance report card (rather than HEEP report card)
  
  
  
  • Compare top energyStar model to a cheap non-energyStar model
    
  • Show the amount of time it'll take to make-up the price difference from savings on electric bill
    
  • Show the total savings from the average lifespan of each of the appliance.
    
  
  
• Appliance Calculator
  
  
  
  • Allow users to compare their specified energyStar model to a cheap non-energyStar model
    
  • Calculate the amount of time it'll take to make-up the price difference from savings on electric bill
    
  • Show the total savings from the average lifespan of each of the specified appliance.
    
  
  
• Cooling Degree Days Calculator (Usage)
  
  
  
  • User enter power usage and temperature of a specific year
    
  • Calculate the total and percent of change in power usages per cooling degree day
    
  
  
• Cooling Degree Day Calculator (Generation)
  
  
  
  • User enter power generated for 2 specified years and base
    
  • Calculates the total and percent of change in power generation per cooling degree day
    
  
  
• Energy Generation (Visualization)
  
• Changes in Oil Consumption (Visualization)
  

From a user's point of view, we think that having these useful tools (calculators) would be a great addition to the page and rather than having a report card to display HEEP's performance, it would be more useful to have a report card that displays the appliance's performance instead. All of these are still just ideas that we intend to present to HEEP in the near future. We'll see what kind of feedback we're receive from them and continue from there. But I'm hoping that they'll be happy with these designs. I'll keep you guys updated

Clearer picture- Visualization

Entering the 3rd week of the HEEP project, we finally have a better understanding of Google Visualization and how to use it. A good part of Visualization is that it works great with data on Google Spreadsheet. Although the data that we've received from HEEP was in an Excel spreadsheet format, It was organized by rows rather than columns making it harder to use query statements. So we're decide to import the useful information from their spreadsheet into a new spreadsheet on Google Docs.

Once that was done, the ball began rolling as we were able to create sample gadgets using the data from Google spreadsheet and some chart templates in Google Visualization. We finally have something to show the HEEP folks. Our first intention was to make our own visualization rather than using the sample templates. But after our meeting with professor Johnson, he recommended that we use sample templates for now so we will have something to show to HEEP. This way, they will have a general idea of how it will look like and suggest any chances they want to make, rather than waiting for us to make own our visualization which would be wasted time if its not what they want.



As of right now, we are still waiting for more data for some of the application they requested. Below is the sample of our Oil Price and Consumption gadget: You can find more Chart Samples here.