You can apply gamification techniques to your hardware project as a way to boost the motivation of the people you are trying to influence. Hardware hacking enables behavior change and gamification I made it myself from the parts, with some help from a friend, for under $100. When I looked for a wifi-enabled trash scale, I found a company that would custom make one for $2,500. Sensors cost money and if we need a lot of them, that might be a big bill. One of the main constraints holding back the evolution of smart cities and widespread disclosure of data. The more hardware hackers and scientists automate their data flow into databases, the more app developers will be able to more easily develop projects that can help solve environmental problems. This is a huge stumbling block for the app developer. Imagine that someone wants to build an app that tracks the flow on energy efficient vehicles, or map the pollution levels of lakes across the country, but the only data they can find is in a PDF. Data needs to be stored in the form of an SQL or Mongo style of database that is callable from a web server. These formats cannot be read by web applications. This is partly because much data in the past was collected manually by humans and not machines. We need the data in a databaseĪ lot of data is trapped in PDF documents and excel spreadsheets. This case study shows us that we need a continual feedback loop of the data in order to keep our motivation on fleek. But their efforts dropped off within a few days, going back to normal for the rest of the month. Like a Fitbit, or even a Facebook chat, it needs to work in real time in order to maintain our motivation.Ī study conducted on Opower by Associate Professor Todd Rogers from Harvard University showed that there was a marked spike in energy efficiency by residents after seeing the Opower chart in their electricity bill. The immediacy of data is important so we can see the effects of our changes on it - it’s called a feedback loop. We need data to be collected continually, in real time. For example, we don’t know where the heat sinks or the pollution pockets are in a city without sensors collecting data on every street. It’s very difficult to harness behavior change tools if we can’t see the detail. Many of the new opportunities in smart cities are being explored by startups (such as WaterSmart, APIS, Air Quality Egg and Loadman Scales) all of which are gathering more granular data. We can’t generate heat maps that show which location a city should focus their change-campaign on. We also can’t understand our own score in context of our neighbors or competitors. This lack of detail is robbing us from using several important behavioral drivers for change.įirstly, if we can’t find the data for our own home, college, business etc, then we can’t compete with our own score to make progress. We need the data to be collected in more granular detailĭata is often collected by the EPA or state departments, but there are very few programs that collect data on granular parameters such as individual, business or household. You can help gather this data using sensors in your hardware hacking project. You have to be able to measure what you want to change if you are going to change anything at all. You know what they say, “If you can’t measure it, it probably doesn’t exist”. These techniques such as disclosure, leaderboards, social comparison, feedback loops and progress bars really do workand data is intrinsic to their design. We need more data on all environmental and social issues so that we can take advantage of the many powerful behavior-change and gamification techniques required to make change happen. Even whole cities and states can struggle to collect this data and make it findable. We don’t know how much water we use, what the air pollution levels are on our street, or how much trash we make. There is a chronic lack of data available on our environmental footprint. Why does the planet need you to start hardware hacking? We need more data
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