Supporting engagement and collaborative exploration with household consumption practices through a data sculpture

Perera, Dushani, Randika, Ayantha, Sivell, David, Gwilliam, Julie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3256-7960 and Verdezoto, Nervo ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5006-4262 2026. Supporting engagement and collaborative exploration with household consumption practices through a data sculpture. Presented at: 2026 Designing Interactive Systems Conference, Singapore, Singaopre, 13-17 June 2026. Proceedings of the 2026 Designing Interactive Systems Conference. ACM, pp. 4005-4018. 10.1145/3800645.3813016

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (5MB)

Abstract

Fostering sustainable household practices is important to reduce environmental impact and address climate change. Data sculptures can offer opportunities to engage people with their consumption practices in meaningful ways in a household context. We present the results of a user study with 15 households that interacted with a data sculpture (Eco-Garden) that was deployed for three weeks. Eco-Garden provides information on electricity, gas, and food waste consumption data to help people understand the relationship between everyday practices and resource consumption. Our results demonstrate that the physicality and aesthetic qualities of Eco-Garden were key to supporting collaborative exploration, reflection, interaction, and family discussions at home. The study reveals how household members gradually integrated the artefact into their routines, increased the household engagement with sustainable practices, encouraged collective action as well as the importance of designing for collaborative exploration, and the temporality of engagement with Eco-Garden and understanding of consumption. Our findings suggest that domestication and defamiliarisation of objects in households can help sustain prolonged and collaborative engagement with eco-feedback technologies.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item - published (Paper)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Architecture Schools > Computer Science & Informatics
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode, Start Date: 2026-06-12
Publisher:	ACM
ISBN:	979-8-4007-2563-0
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	26 June 2026
Last Modified:	02 Aug 2026 11:43
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/187755

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item