“ How to make the office environment more sustainable ”
For this Joint Master Project of the master’s of Industrial Design, six master students representing all three masters have formed a design team to work on a project initiated by a large multinational. The team was asked by the company to design a service or product to make existing buildings more sustainable. Because of the extent of this project, only the main part of the process and outcome will be explained below.
A choice was made to focus on offices, especially because of the large market size and high energy usage. Within offices, the indoor climate was seen as an interesting field of attention for our project, based on the following reasons: Heating and lighting are the biggest sources of energy consumption within Dutch offices and the indoor climate is the biggest complaint in the office environments.
After an extensive ideation phase including brainstorms, research, cost calculations and expert meetings a choice was made to develop the Smart Climate Control System. It entails a system which controls the temperature, blinds, ventilation and light of the building based on both data and sensor input of the users (presence, agenda, preference) and the environment (temperature, light intensity, weather forecast).
Main functions of the system include:
Temperature and blind regulation can switch to a more energy efficient mode, taking the actual user presence and probability of the user returning into consideration. This change is determined based on the digital agenda of the employee and its personal punctuality pattern. Room ventilation and lighting are switched based on presence. Preferences of temperature and blinds are stated via a computer interface, in which users are stimulated to choose energy efficiently. Personal preference patterns, related to the weather, are recognized and used to minimize unwanted user action. An altered digital booking system for meeting rooms is used to encourage users to book the most energy efficient room.
These images shows the interface concepts that are developed for the Smart Climate Control System to support sustainable behavior and make the system more efficient without compromising the user. Respectively: blind adjustment interface, temperature adjustment interface, pattern recognition interface and room booking interface.
This movie was one of the end results delivered to the company to clarify and support the concept (10 minutes). Besides the movie an user research was conducted concerning the clarity and usefulness of the interfaces and the practicality of the system settings. Another key method used to validate the concept was a cost saving simulation. It shows that a six people room with an 80% occupancy within office hours can save 36% of the annual energy costs, which is 54 euro. Furthermore a roadmap was made to cover trends, competitors, threats and opportunities. A flowchart was made for describing the system in more detail. Besides, a pricing strategy and market and industry analysis were done to underpin the final recommendations to the company.