Onzo

Onzo’s Head of Innovations, Ben Pirt, is just back from presenting at the World Meter Design Congress – part of Metering America 2010 in San Diego.

Two of the highlights of the congress were Anne Shen-Smith from San Diego Gas & Electric and Craig Boice from Boice Dunham Group. Both focussed strongly on the role of the customer in the rapidly developing world of smart metering, and demand reduction and energy efficiency. They talked about why utilities need to understand their customers and be willing to work with them if they want customers to take on board what they’re trying to accomplish. Anne and Craig also pointed out that some human interaction goes a long way towards achieving this.

Banks, telecom companies, and supermarkets have all had to go through the same customer engagement process, which means there is a wealth of information and theories for utilities to build on, and there are lots of people like Craig and Anne who are trying to help them through this process.

In Onzo’s presentation, Ben talked about the effect of design on behaviour change, with a focus specifically on meter design. The message was that few people seem to link together the impact of the hard edge of technical design with the softer one of behaviour change, yet this is one of the tools we can use to help people form a better understanding of their energy behaviour; as Craig has said earlier, “customers want tools”. Moreover, if you get better data out of the meter, you can do more interesting and useful things with it, which can also help to change behaviour (so long, of course, as the information is clearly presented). Perhaps Edward Tufte, master of information communication, should be taken as inspiration.

You can see the presentation slides online.