Interfaces that Promote Conservation
Today it is easy to get carried away and be wasteful with everyday essentials in plentiful and inexpensive supply. We don’t think twice about grabbing two sheets of paper towel, even if one would be enough to clean up our spill. There are five more rolls tucked away in a kitchen cabinet so surely using more than needed won’t hurt anything, or will it? In addition to basics being readily available, we are keenly aware that excessive waste is not good for our environment. Trash ends up in landfills piled higher than our houses where it can decades to decompose or in the oceans where sea creatures often mistake pieces of it for food. In addition to pollution being a big concern, water conservation is as well. We often deplete water tables faster than they can be replenished.
One of the places we tend to pay a lot of attention to in public but not so much in our homes is the bathroom. Most public bathrooms have motion-detecting faucets that only cut on and stay on if our hands are in the area that triggers water flow. They also typically have paper towel dispensers that dispense just enough paper towel upon waving our hands in front of or under them to dry off our hands. Some even have hand driers that only blow air if our hands are in front of them. All three of these employ tangible interfaces, also known as sensor-based interactions (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012), to help reduce water, paper, and electricity consumption in hopes of leaving the planet better off than the way we found it.
In our own homes we could reduce waste by installing similar faucets and reducing water pressure. What about the oh so embarrassing act of clogging the toilet? Well, we could install motion sensing toilet paper dispensers that would cut down on excessive toilet paper use. We are also starting to see a trend in installing toilets without levers for flushing, but instead motion sensors to do that bit of dirty work (Baig, 2014). An innovative way to reduce the risk of clogging the toilet would be utilizing a sensor that could detect when we were getting close to using too much paper and automatically flush it for us. This could be either a sensor detecting either increased water level or weight in the toilet.
Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., & Preece, J. (2012). Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
One of the places we tend to pay a lot of attention to in public but not so much in our homes is the bathroom. Most public bathrooms have motion-detecting faucets that only cut on and stay on if our hands are in the area that triggers water flow. They also typically have paper towel dispensers that dispense just enough paper towel upon waving our hands in front of or under them to dry off our hands. Some even have hand driers that only blow air if our hands are in front of them. All three of these employ tangible interfaces, also known as sensor-based interactions (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012), to help reduce water, paper, and electricity consumption in hopes of leaving the planet better off than the way we found it.
In our own homes we could reduce waste by installing similar faucets and reducing water pressure. What about the oh so embarrassing act of clogging the toilet? Well, we could install motion sensing toilet paper dispensers that would cut down on excessive toilet paper use. We are also starting to see a trend in installing toilets without levers for flushing, but instead motion sensors to do that bit of dirty work (Baig, 2014). An innovative way to reduce the risk of clogging the toilet would be utilizing a sensor that could detect when we were getting close to using too much paper and automatically flush it for us. This could be either a sensor detecting either increased water level or weight in the toilet.
Reflections
Regardless of what we chose, we should always be mindful of being conservative and taking care of our environment. We only have one planet earth and we should do our part to ensure that we leave a healthy planet for generations to come.References
Baig, E. (2014, 6 17). Bottom line on touchless toilet? Pretty neat. Retrieved from USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2014/06/17/kohler-touchless-toilet/10637501/Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., & Preece, J. (2012). Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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