A kiosk at the Irving Institute where students can track energy data, explore trends, and engage with sustainability insights.
There's a critical gap in students' awareness of their energy consumption patterns and carbon footprint, presenting a barrier to informed and responsible energy use. This project, a collaboration between the Dartmouth DALI Lab and The Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy & Society at Dartmouth, seeks to bridge this gap by providing engaging and informative resources
Over 20 weeks, we developed an interactive kiosk to make Dartmouth’s campus energy usage more accessible and engaging. The project introduced five key features:
1. Heat Map and Building Leaderboard
2. Energy Usage Across Campus
3. Timeline of Darmouth's Energy History
4. Regional Energy Data
5. Knowledge Quiz
These tools provide students with real-time insights and historical context, encouraging informed decisions about energy use and sustainability on campus.
Title: Product Designer @ DALI Lab, Energy Kiosk
Within a 20-week timeline, I transformed user research into a dynamic educational kiosk prototype, focusing on Energy Usage, Building a Heat Map, Regional Energy Data, Dartmouth's Energy History, and Game-Based Quiz to boost student engagement. My work involved iterating from sketches to high-fidelity designs, informed by continuous user feedback.
Designers: Me, Emma Y., Soo P.
Developers: Devon S., Miruna., Nicole W., Selena Z.
Product Manager: Richa R.
Figma
Slack
Adobe Ilustrator
Competitive Analysis
UX Research
Sketches
Wireframing
Prototyping
User Testing
Our search for similar projects showed that our Energy Kiosk concept is breaking new ground in energy usage visualization. To fill this gap, we conducted interviews with 10 individuals connected to the Irving Institute, including 5 undergraduates, 3 graduate students, and 2 staff/administrators, to unearth their views on energy consumption awareness.
From these conversations, we identified three key insights:
From Guided by our HMW question:
How might we educate all visitors at the Irving building on Dartmouth energy data in a fun, engaging way?
We prioritized the dashboard map as the central feature based on client feedback. Throughout development, we ensured our design aligned with our three core principles for the kiosk, creating an experience that is interactive, visually engaging, and educational.
Designing for a kiosk was new to us, so defining dimensions and grids was a challenge.
Our flow sketches prioritized simplicity, ensuring users could seamlessly interact with the interactive map while easily navigating to the energy usage, timeline and other key features via tabs.
