Devices designed to let you monitor energy consumption around your home typically look like interactive thermostats, making them somewhat boring to the eye. That’s where concept designers come in, sprucing functional things up to make them more appealing to users to interact with. You can see this type of touch in something like the Energy Aware Clock, currently part of a traveling exhibit called Visual Voltage, which is focused on “a new view of energy from an art and design perspective.”
The Energy Aware Clock, designed by folks from the Swedish Interactive Institute, tries to get you to visualize the usage of energy around your home in much the same way you watch the passing of time on a regular wall clock. It shows you the real time energy consumption in your environment by, for example, displaying a spike when the dishwasher is turned on. Graphics of each day’s usage patterns are interlaid atop those of previous ones, according to the designers, to give you a several days perspective of how much electricity you go through over that period of time.
image via Interactive Institute
Visual Voltage [via TreeHugger]
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