Drip, Drop, Save a Lot

By Clarissa Choe, Abosh Upadhyaya, Vincent Liu

Problem and Solution Overview

Our team of HCI product designers and researchers at the University of Washington were given the task of designing a product interface that tackles a problem in a sustainable manner. Our group chose the issue of water conservation, or lack thereof. We focused on homeowners in the greater Seattle area. We chose Seattle because our research showed that Seattle is an area where many people are not knowledgeable about water conservation practices (as opposed to the Californians we surveyed). Providing Seattleites (and individuals who don’t currently conserve water) with a sustainable solution to prevent water overuse would help mitigate extra water loss caused due to lack of knowledge. We wanted to find an easy way to allow users to view their own water usage based on appliances in their home, and also provide users the ability to compare their water usage to other homeowners around them. We settled on a suite of attachable smart devices that monitor water usage on household appliances, all of which connect to a mobile and smartwatch app. The app provides the user with the ability to view their water usage from their appliances and share their water usage with other users, granting them the ability to compare their water usage to others around them.

Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants

We used two research methods to gain information about water conservation habits of homeowners. Our first research method we made use of is interviews because interviews are the quickest and most direct way to receive lots of information from participants in a short period of time. Because water usage is a dynamic for most people (we all use different amounts of water because of different reasons and situations), an interview would best capture specific personal uses of water. We interviewed a total of six people from different parts of the west coast, not just Seattle. By incorporating information from interviewees from dryer and wetter climates, we can analyze the differences in how each region thought about water conservation which is useful when designing a solution for pushing water conservation in wetter climates. Our second research method was surveys. Once again, since water usage is so different for people with diverse backgrounds, a survey is a quick and efficient way for someone to answer fast facts about their monthly or daily water usage. We posted the survey on online discussion boards and were able to collect responses from a multitude of geographical locations giving data on water conservation patterns in different regions.

Design Research Results and Themes

By looking through our survey results and our interview notes, common themes continually appeared that allowed us to focus our solution space.

1. It’s hard to quantify and visualize daily water usage.

Almost all of our survey participants and a number of our interviewees commented that it was difficult to fully understand the quantity of water that was used daily. For example, one interviewee can visualize their water usage by comparing the quantity to one-gallon milk cartons. However, when trying to visualize a larger quantity such as the amount of water in a swimming pool, even with the knowledge of how much water was in a one gallon carton, the interviewee gave an estimate of 50 gallons which is magnitudes off number for an average swimming pool (~18,000 gallons). From this information, we made sure to consider designs that will help easily quantify daily water usage in a more easily quantifiable method.

2. People in drier areas seem to be more aware of their water usage.

There was a large distinction between people in more drought prone areas and people in more wet areas. For example, of the people we interviewed, people who lived in the Greater Seattle area tended to feel that they did not need to be as careful of water conservation as other areas. By being close to large sources of freshwater they are not prone to drought-like conditions and can have more freedom with water usage. On the other hand, interviewees from California were more conscious about their water usage. They would employ more water conservation methods due to dryer conditions and government-placed regulations to restrict water usage. This made residents more mindful about water usage. A design we will now consider is to convince people about future water shortages instead of looking at the present for the state of water usage in water abundant areas.

3. People who pay their water bill do not pay attention to the amount of water used.

Another trend we noticed in our research was that many survey and interview participants who did pay for their water bill, did not explicitly look at the amount of water used. For example, one interviewee stated that they only looked at the amount that was paid. They only looked at the amount of water utilized and if it was above the normal amount due to the price difference. From this information, we will consider designs that can center around money as an incentive to convince people to lower their water usage by integrating the amount of money they have to pay for their water usage.

Proposed Design

With the research that we collected and analyzed, we realized that with the current system to see water usage from the monthly bill, there is no method to see daily water usage and potential leaks and no awareness of how much water is too much water in a day in comparison to people living around you. So, from this information, we integrated two major tasks into a product that we believe are essential for homeowners in Seattle to improve their water conservation habits. Our solution is a smart device ecosystem where data about the water used by that water outlet in the house is recorded constantly. Each faucet, showerhead, washing machine, dishwasher, toilet, etc. will have a sensor that will track the water used by that particular plumbing fixture. An app on the phone and watch will be used to display the data that was collected. Depicted below is an example of using our app to discover leaky plumbing fixtures in your house.

The person was able to discover their leaking plumbing fixture due to the abnormally high water usage from the faucet. This feature provided by the app helps to reduce the water utilized by a user and have them become more water conservation minded because they can actively change out leaky fixtures. Users can see their daily water usage and detect any abnormalities in their water used to become more conservation minded.

Depicted below is an additional feature of the app is the ability to communicate water usage to other people in a competitive-like format via a leaderboard.

Users can add friends, family, or strangers on a street to directly compare their water usage. By allowing users to compare, people will be able to know if they are doing enough to conserve water based on the amount of water that is used by people living near them. By including a leaderboard, it can increase the awareness of water conservation with people using the app.

By providing users the ability to know the amount of water they have used in a single day, it provides a baseline for both how much water they use and a comparison on a daily basis. The large majority of people from our research claimed that they had no clue on how much water they used on a daily basis. Additionally, estimating this was also not possible because they simply had no baseline. Some interviewees admitted that being ignorant of their own water usage mitigated their guilt when over-consuming water. Knowing one’s water consumption will encourage people to preserve water as their water usage is no longer arbitrary but carefully tracked. The excuse of “not knowing” is no more.