There is a new project in the WaterAware format, focusing on gaining insights on end-user water consumption. Below will follow a rather theoretical justification for the project, but don’t worry, I’ve kept it short.
Practices can be interpreted through a three-dimensional framework consisting of meaning, skill and technology, which together explain the practice. However, practices are part of habits and routines, and thus does not exist as separate entities, but rather as a part of an interconnected chain or system of practices. It has been previously suggested that attempts to influence and change the practices and promote sustainable consumption patterns that do not take into consideration on one hand the dimensions underlying the practice, as well as the patterns in the interconnected system of practices on the other hand are likely to have little or no persistent impact.
Thus, it is important for any initiative that aim for reduced resource consumption to be based on a proper analysis and understanding of the full spectrum of elements comprising the targeted practice, but also how it is entangled with everyday practices that are combined in clusters across space and time.
So what this means is that for us to be able to come up with effective innovations that promote water conservation, we can be greatly helped by understand how people use water, what meaning they put on their use, and how skill and technology interplay with everyday pattern of practices.
For this we will create and test a web application that will allow users to create a form of water diary, annotating every use of water providing unprecedented insight.
This is all enabled by the HSB Living Lab platform of course, where every tap point is metered individually and water consumption is accessible through an API, which allow our 3rd party application to tag on.
We are in beta phase of app development, but timeschedule is looking good for a october or november study…
