Augmented Energy

Sustainability is currently one of today’s most critical and complex problems. A significant proportion of achieving a sustainable environment is to reduce energy consumption. Reducing energy consumption is complex to achieve because of the lack of insights. Modern technology can recognize which individual devices are turned on, but the next step is to translate this data to humans. This can be done through visualization. The research question contains two parts, the first part is the implementation of unconscious cognition. To ensure the impact of a visualization, the unconscious cognitive effect of the visualization can be researched. The second part is to visualize meaningful relative energy consumption. To ensure that visualization is meaningful, the human motivational value for activities around energy-consuming devices can be measured. The research into unconscious cognition of augmented reality is done by a combination of desk research and testing participants on their affiliation with shapes and motion. The results showed that shape affiliation is the most viable to achieve the best outcome because the results of the participant had a higher rate of unanimity. When used in combination, 3D object motion can be a viable option to enhance the effect of the 3D shapes. For the research into human motivation for activities around energy-consuming devices, the Self-Determination Theory is used. Based on this theory a questionnaire and a formula were developed to measure the motivation value for a given activity. This user test turned out to be very effective in measuring motivational value. The combination of the two parts in the research question leads to a manner to implement unconscious cognition to create a meaningful augmented reality visualization of relative energy consumption.