Making sustainability sustainable: challenges in the design of eco-interaction technologies

The smart home is here. One area where smart home devices promise to deliver great benefits is in the control of home heating, ventilation, and cooling (HVAC) systems. In this paper, we seek to inform the design of future heating and cooling systems by investigating users' experiences with the Nest Learning Thermostat, a commercially available smart home device. We conducted a qualitative study where we compared people's interactions with conventional thermostats with interactions with the Nest. A key finding was that the Nest impacted users' pattern of HVAC control, but only for a while, and caused new problems in unrealized energy savings. In leveraging these findings, we create a set of design implications for Eco-Interaction, the design of features and human-system interactions with the goal of saving energy.