Learning through feedback
As a game designer, I deal with the importance of feedback every day. Without feedback, games quickly become annoying, frustrating, or boring. If you start losing a game without being told why, you’ll quickly give up.
Research shows that feedback is just as important in real life, and the more immediate the better. Think about it a little and it makes sense. To improve, you have to know when you’re doing something wrong. If it takes a week (or a month or a year) to learn that you could have been doing better, it’ll take you a lot longer to improve (if you can even remember what you were doing wrong).
I think that’s one reason that people have trouble reducing their environmental impact. There’s no feedback when you buy organic instead of factory farmed (apart from some negative feedback on cost). When driving your car, you don’t get much feedback on how much gas you’re using until you have fill up again. Your electrical usage is basically invisible until the end of the month when you get your bill.
That’s why I love these new gadgets I see popping up that give you minute-by-minute updates on how you’re doing. Yeah, it can be distracting to see an instant mpg, but at least you’ll know when you’re doing well. That’s also why like the Kill-A-Watt appeals to me.
Of course, the problem with the Kill-A-Watt is that it only measures one device at a time and you have to be pretty close to see it. A group of psychologists ran an experiment where they hooked an ambient orb up to some people’s electrical usage. It glowed blue when usage was low and red when usage was high. With that change alone, people had instant feedback on how much extra energy it took to cool their house another degree versus turning on another fan. Over three months, just having that feedback reduced their energy usage by 50%!
Unfortunately, the ambient orb doesn’t connect to your electrical system by default. That’s where the Wattson comes in. The Wattson is like a whole house Kill-A-Watt that glows and tells you how much your electrical use is costing (or is costing the environment, in terms of CO2. The base unit is portable and runs on 5 watts of power, while an external wireless device hooks up to your electrical meter. The only drawback is that it’s UK-only (and costs about $300).
There are cheaper devices, like the Efergy (less than $100), but all the ones I’ve found have been for the UK. Where are the US versions? The cheapest way to make your life more sustainable is to reduce, so why are US companies focused more on things like solar panels than things like the Wattson?
Since I can’t get one here, maybe I’ll start recording my energy usage like I record my budget, by just going through once a day and recording my expenditures.
Do any of you have any cool methods of feedback that you use to help keep you on track? I’d love to hear about them!
Andy said,
June 14, 2008 @ 12:00 pm
I’ll have to disagree on a lot of what you said. Since I started eating organic food (back when that meant packaged expensive organic food from Price Chopper) I either felt better because the food I was eating didn’t have bad chemicals in it, or because I tricked myself into feeling better eating that food. To me, just looking at the list of ingredients and being able to understand them was still positive feedback. Real or not, it worked. Then I started eating local food, and had an amazing feedback by doing that. Instead of shopping at the grocery store, I was getting my food from a CSA and the farmers market, and one small store which sells a lot of local foods at regular prices. I knew who I was buying food from, they told me recipes, they told me how to store that food when I bought it in bulk, and the feedback was way more than just buying organic food from the big box grocery store. Real organic unpackaged unmarketed food costs less than conventional food, at least where I have lived, so I disagree with the negative feedback of paying more for better food too. And for those who still think organic is too expensive, think about bulk buying of whole foods (not processed junk). Strawberries from the farmer’s market may be $3.75/pint, but they are only $1.70 a pound if I go pick them myself. Last summer I bought local organic tomatoes for 37 cents a pound because I bought a 27 pound box of them, split that into 10 bags which I froze, and used it throughout the winter. Organic tomatoes otherwise were around $4/lb (TEN TIMES MORE!)
When I drove, I had a scangauge device that told me instantaneous miles per gallon readings, which is how I learned how to drive 150%+ EPA ratings in multiple cars. But even without that device I can still get the same mileage, now that I have learned how to drive that way. And in all honesty, I cannot figure out how I used to get such bad gas mileage, because even when speeding I got 120-130% EPA ratings. It’s ingrained in my driving habits now to use less gas and I have instant feedback just from hearing the RPMs. Of course filling at the pump is still a good feedback but I don’t have that opportunity much anymore. Plus, I have instant feedback every time I bike somewhere instead of driving. I can feel it in my muscles that I made a choice to not use gas and use my energy instead. This morning I biked with a group of 20 or so people from the park down the street to the farmers market. That’s the best feedback I have had in a long time, and I’m excited to see that group grow.
My Kill-A-Watt is plugged into a power strip which has my cell phone charger (5), TV (48), dvd player (5), laptop (13), stereo (32) and a clock (1). Those numbers in parenthesis are how many watts they use when actually on, but I generally unplug them when they are off. The only other corded electronics in the apartment are a microwave and toaster which are unplugged unless in use, and one lamp. The water heater and fridge are connected in such a way that I can’t unplug them, although I do leave the water heater off most of the time, and it’s turned to 110F when it is on. The kill-a-watt is a neat device but now that it has been on for a while, I don’t really look at it anymore. It’s neat knowing that my computer and tv usage has averaged at only 0.25 kW-hrs a day (about 3 cents!)
My uncle has a device that he clipped onto his outdoor meter, and it wirelessly sends the power usage to a little screen and calculates the cost per hour and other neat things. It’s called the power cost monitor. I think they go for a few hundred bucks. http://www.powercostmonitor.com/
I’m still trying to figure out my first electrical bill in this apartment. I have never paid for electricity before, and I estimated my usage around 100kW at the maximum, but the bill said 225kWh this past month. That does include one week of the previous tenant, and one week of no one living here, so I guess it is possible the last guy used a ton of power his last week, but I doubt it. I’m eager to see what the second bill says! I was also amazed that the taxes and fees were more than half of the cost on the bill too!
Have a nice weekend. It’s berry picking season starting this week too!
-Andy
Student Doctor Green said,
June 15, 2008 @ 4:01 pm
I like doing the kind of stuff Maggie does with money. I give myself an incentive not to buy coffee or soda in disposable containers and feel good about saving the money. Even seeing that my electric bill is less after bumping up the temp is some feedback.
emma said,
June 15, 2008 @ 9:24 pm
Of course there are no good American versions out there. America is a total consumer culture. If we stop consuming things, the companies would make less money ( no!). Its not in their best interests to make and sell these products.
I like the previous commenter’s idea of putting the Kill-A-Watt on a power strip though.
Will said,
June 17, 2008 @ 8:46 pm
Andy: That’s quite a comment! I don’t feel like I can address every point, but I think we agree more than we disagree. I think feeling bad when you eat (or read ingredients from) non-organic food is definite feedback, it’s just not feedback that most people share. Around here, local food is pretty expensive, but that’s definitely not the case everywhere.
Now that you’ve learned the skills, you don’t need your scangauge anymore, but I doubt you’d have been able to learn as well without it in the first place. It’s true that experts don’t need external feedback anymore, but I think it’s still vitaly important for newcomers.
As emma says, plugging a Kill-A-Watt into a power strip is a great idea! I might try that when we move into the new place, especially since the furnace will be gas. However, I still think that the easier it is to get feedback, the more people will change.
That power cost monitor is exactly what I was looking for! I guess terminology for the devices is slightly different on this side of the pond, so my searches missed them. The Amazon reviews of the device aren’t great, but it might be worth it to check it out anyway. Someday…
SDG: Creating personal feedback is a great way to do it! Feedback from utility bills is great when it works, but I rarely feel like I have a handle on why it fluctuates. For example, one month Maggie and I had a total water bill of zero (well, plus the constant fees) when normally we use 1-2 units. I have no idea why that one month was different. We were in town, ran the dishwasher, washed clothes, and still didn’t get there. Some more immediate feedback would have helped us figure out what we did differently.
William said,
September 9, 2008 @ 2:38 am
You might want to take a look at a product called the energy detective, aka TED, http://www.theenergydetective.com/ I just recently purchased one myself as well as the add-on software package that allows you to hook the unit up to your computer for some added graphing and plain old pretty graphics. The software also can track pounds of co2 burned for power used. It’s a pretty slick package. Basic model is 139 I believe, the model with the usb port is 145ish. And the software rings in around 45. Installation is pretty easy, but does require opening up your breaker box to install some of the hardware.