The development of Web-based Information Systems is crucial in the quest to maintain and develop ... more The development of Web-based Information Systems is crucial in the quest to maintain and develop the enterprise competiveness. However, capturing requirements from Business Processes (BP) is still an issue, as existing methods mostly focus, or on human aspects and the user interface, or on business concerns as rules and workflow coordination, and therefore do not specify all the Software Architectural components which are relevant for software development. We present the Goals Approach, which analyzes BPs and User Tasks and details them in the process of methodically designing and structuring the User Interface, the Business Logic and the Database of the Information System given a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. In this paper we focus on how to obtain the Goals business model of requirements based on the DEMO method. The approach can be used for in-house software development, and the method is straightforward fitting Small and Medium Enterprises agility needs.
Non-intrusive load monitoring (also known as NILM or energy disaggregation) is the process of est... more Non-intrusive load monitoring (also known as NILM or energy disaggregation) is the process of estimating the energy consumption of individual appliances from electric power measurements taken at a limited number of locations in the electric distribution of a building. This approach reduces sensing infrastructure costs by relying on machine learning techniques to monitor electric loads. However, the ability to evaluate and benchmark the proposed approaches across different datasets is key for enabling the generalization of research findings and consequently contributes to the large-scale adoption of this technology. Still, only recently researchers have focused on creating and standardizing the existing datasets in order to deliver a single interface to run NILM evaluations. Furthermore, there is still no consensus regarding, which performance metrics should be used to measure and report the performance of NILM systems and their underlying algorithms. This paper provides a review of the main datasets, metrics, and tools for evaluating the performance of NILM systems and technologies. Specifically, we review three main topics: (a) publicly available datasets, (b) performance metrics, and (c) frameworks and toolkits. The review suggests future research directions in NILM systems and technologies, including cross-datasets, performance metrics for evaluation and generalizable frameworks for benchmarking NILM technology.
This position paper discusses how UML can help bridge the gap between current object-oriented sof... more This position paper discusses how UML can help bridge the gap between current object-oriented software engineering (OOSE) practice and current human-computer interaction (HCI) practice. The paper presents WISDOM (Whitewater Interactive System Development with Object Models), an integrated, lightweight, unified modeling language (UML) based, software-engineering methodology. WISDOM is a methodology specially designed for the development of interactive software by small companies and organizations (SMEs) and it makes extensive use of object models to integrate user-centered workflows in the mainstream unified development process.
The twin crises of nature and climate is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence and increa... more The twin crises of nature and climate is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence and increasing public concern about long-term and potentially irreversible consequences of the Anthropocene. People and wildlife living today, as well as future generations, are at risk unless urgent action is taken to reverse the loss of plants, insects and other creatures on which we depend for food, clean water, and a stable climate. As urban dwellings become the main concentration of citizens, we thought of addressing these issues through a series of urban interventions aiming at educating and enhancing the user's biodiversity and sustainability awareness through play and reflection. We provide a list of preliminary insights, discussed, and shared trying to frame how these new interventions can contribute to a panorama where playful interactions in smart cities can inspire sustainable and respectful attitudes towards nature. We conclude with a constructive conversation about playful urban approaches aimed at understanding how the interaction process could be re-centered to promote environmental protection and ecological consciousness on the part of technology users. Our case studies strive to reconcile concepts and theories, about ecological computing, more than human design, biodiversity actions and nature awareness and conservation in urban settings, for the design of urban playful and enjoyable systems that promote environmental protection and ecological consciousness on the part of technology users.
Existing software modeling tools are widely recognized to be hard to use and, hence, to adopt. We... more Existing software modeling tools are widely recognized to be hard to use and, hence, to adopt. We believe those usability problems are related to a legacy of formalism-centric tools that don't promote the new challenges of modern software development. In this short paper, we briefly describe a new tool, under development, that tries to promote usability in modeling tools to support collaborative development of interactive software. It focuses on usable, real-world languages and a developer-centered design.
Existing software modeling tools are widely recognized to be hard to use and, hence, to adopt. We... more Existing software modeling tools are widely recognized to be hard to use and, hence, to adopt. We believe those usability problems are related to a legacy of formalism-centric tools that don't promote the new challenges of modern software development. In this short paper, we briefly describe a new tool, under development, that tries to promote usability in modeling tools to support collaborative development of interactive software. It focuses on usable, real-world languages and a developer-centered design.
The UML is recognized to be the dominant diagrammatic modeling language in the software industry.... more The UML is recognized to be the dominant diagrammatic modeling language in the software industry. However, it's support for building interactive systems is still acknowledged to be insufficient. There is a common misconception that the same models developed to support the design of the application internals are also adequate to support interaction design, leveraging the usability aspects of the applications. In this paper we identify and discuss the major problems using the UML to document, specify and design interactive systems. Here we propose a UML profile for interactive systems development that leverages on human-computer interaction domain knowledge under the common notation and semantics of the UML. Our proposal integrates with existing object-oriented software engineering best practice, fostering coevolutionary development of interactive systems and enabling artifact change between software engineering and human-computer interaction.
The UML is recognized to be the dominant diagrammatic modeling language in the software industry.... more The UML is recognized to be the dominant diagrammatic modeling language in the software industry. However, it's support for building interactive systems is still acknowledged to be insufficient. There is a common misconception that the same models developed to support the design of the application internals are also adequate to support interaction design, leveraging the usability aspects of the applications. In this paper we propose a minimal set of extensions for a UML profile for interactive systems development that leverages on human-computer interaction domain knowledge under the common notation and semantics of the UML. Our pro-posal integrates with existing objectoriented software engineering best practice, fostering co-evolutionary development of interactive systems and enabling artifact change between software engineering and human-computer interaction.
This paper describes an approach to adapt the use-case point estimation method to fit the require... more This paper describes an approach to adapt the use-case point estimation method to fit the requirements of agile development of interactive software. Creating product cost estimates early in the development lifecycle is a challenge for the software industry, they require substantial data from past projects and constant feedback and fine-tuning, which are rarely available or consistent through interactive software development. In addition, the profusion of incremental and evolutionary development methods (like Scrum and XP) produced new challenges with estimating frequent releases. Here we propose several changes to the original use-case point estimation method, in particular to take advantage of the enhanced information that can be extracted from usagecentered design (usageCD) that devotes particular attention to critical aspects like weighting actors and uses-cases for complexity. We propose to exploit user-roles, essential use-cases and the usageCD architecture to enhance the weighting heuristics for assigning complexity factors to actors and use-cases required to calculate the unadjusted use-case point reflecting the complexity of the requirements for a given iteration or evolution. We propose to exploit userroles as the main basis for weighting complex actors, which originally are grouped in the highest weight factor. Conversely we propose to extract the complexity of use-cases from essential use case steps depicted through user intentions and system responsibilities and also the analysis classes extract from those for the usageCD architecture. Detailing this approach the paper presents a contribution, not only to leverage more accurate early lifecycle software estimation, but also to bridge the gap between SE and HCI enabling cross-fertilization between the two disciplines.
UML has become the standard language for modelling in different areas and domains, but it is wide... more UML has become the standard language for modelling in different areas and domains, but it is widely recognized that it lacks support for User Interface Design (UID). On the other hand, ConcurTaskTree (CTT) is one of the most widely used notations for task and dialogue modelling. An important achievement is the proposed notation and semantics for CTT by extending the UML metamodel, proving that task modelling in user interface design can be accomplished by a UML compliant notation. For the interface structure design was proposed that UML's CTT could be complemented with Canonical Abstract Prototypes (CAP) leading to a model-based user interface design method co-specified by the presentation (CAP) and behaviour (UML's CTT) perspectives. In this paper we propose another step in this UID method by defining a specific model compliant with the OMG recommended Model Driven Architecture (MDA), which will be the intermediary between the design model and an implementation of the user interface. This proposal will align the UID method with the MDA recommendation making it possible to automatically generate interface prototypes from conceptual models. Abstract Prototypes, Model Driven Architecture.
In this paper, we argue that the combination of task modeling with abstract prototyping improves ... more In this paper, we argue that the combination of task modeling with abstract prototyping improves the effectiveness of the user interface design at an early stage of the development process. Currently there is no effective way to connect popular task and presentation based formalisms (e.g. ConcurTaskTrees -CTTs and Canonical Abstract Prototypes -CAPs) in interactive system development. Here we present and illustrate an approach that relates CTTs with CAPs under the common semantics of the UML 2.0. We find that an abstract prototype is more suitable as a starting point to represent and infer the task structure that supports the user interaction. Our approach is supported by the DialogSketch tool, which enables the creation, design and editing of a UML version of CAPs and CTTs that can be co-edited and simulated in an innovative way that leverages effective and usable simulation of abstract user-interfaces.
In this paper we present our approach to create an end-to-end software platform to enable the cre... more In this paper we present our approach to create an end-to-end software platform to enable the creation of meaningful and systematic, cross-dataset performance evaluations and benchmarks of Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring technology. We specifically propose a new file format to represent public datasets, a software framework to implement algorithms and metrics as well as the application of ceiling analysis to evaluate the overall performance of NILM systems.
This paper presents our efforts in understanding the long-term effects of eco-feedback devices. O... more This paper presents our efforts in understanding the long-term effects of eco-feedback devices. Our work argues that lack of long term in the wild studies is a missed opportunity to understand how these devices are used after the novelty wears off. We build on previous work that showed a significant decrease in user awareness after a short period with a relapse in consumption, with the presented studies we aimed to investigate if new forms of feedback could overcome this issue, maintaining the users awareness for longer periods of time.
This paper presents EnerSpectrum a standard wall electricity socket redesigned to present how muc... more This paper presents EnerSpectrum a standard wall electricity socket redesigned to present how much of the electricity being consumed is sourced from a renewable energy source. We build on studies that report an increase in consumer energy awareness and literacy when presented with the source of their electricity. The prototype was evaluated by 10 users using interviews, which found the concept interesting and valuable. We conclude this paper with an outline of the future work necessary to evaluate the EnerSpectrum in real live conditions.
This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of an eco-feedback system capable o... more This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of an eco-feedback system capable of providing detailed household consumption information and also real-time production breakdown per energy source. We build on recent studies reporting an increased awareness generated by ecofeedback systems that also integrate micro-production information, taking advantage of a closed grid production network on an island with a high concentration of renewables, we deployed the What-a-Watt system in a building with 9 households for a period of 34 consecutive weeks. Results show that all the participating families have shown increased awareness of the production and distribution of electricity, thus becoming more familiarized with concepts such as the different sources of energy and how their availability relates to external variables such as weather conditions and time of day. Furthermore, our results also show, that the families using our system have managed to reduce their overall consumption. This research is a first attempt to provide more effective eco-feedback systems to consumers by integrating complex Smartgrid information in the feedback.
For the last couple of decades the world has been witnessing a change in habits of energy consump... more For the last couple of decades the world has been witnessing a change in habits of energy consumption in domestic environments, with electricity emerging as the main source of energy consumed. The effects of these changes in our eco-system are hard to assess, therefore encouraging researchers from different fields to conduct studies with the goal of understanding and improving perceptions and behaviors regarding household energy consumption. While several of these studies report success in increasing awareness, most of them are limited to short periods of time, thus resulting in a reduced knowledge of how householders will behave in the long-term. In this paper we attempt to reduce this gap presenting a long-term study on household electricity consumption. We deployed a real-time non-intrusive energy monitoring and ecofeedback system in 12 families during 52 weeks. Results show an increased awareness regarding electricity consumption despite a significant decrease in interactions with the eco-feedback system over time. We conclude that after one year of deployment of eco-feedback it was not possible to see any significant increase or decrease in the household consumption. Our results also confirm that consumption is tightly coupled with independent variables like the household size and the income-level of the families.
This paper presents a low-cost framework for non-intrusive home energy monitoring and research bu... more This paper presents a low-cost framework for non-intrusive home energy monitoring and research built on top of Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) concepts and techniques. NILM solutions are already considered low-cost alternatives to the big majority of existing commercial energy monitors but the goal of this work is to make its cost even lower by using a mini netbook as a packaged solution. The mini netbook is installed in the home's main circuit breaker panel and computes power consumption by reading current and voltage through the built-in sound card. At the same time, feedback to the users is provided using the 11'' LCD screen as well as other built-in I/O modules. The meter is also capable of detecting changes in power consumption and tries to find out which appliance lead to that change. It is believed that such a system will not only be important as a tool for energy monitoring and feedback, but also serve as an open system that can be easily changed to accommodate and test new or existing non-intrusive load monitoring techniques.
This paper discusses two important issues about integrating SE and HCI. The first issue is userce... more This paper discusses two important issues about integrating SE and HCI. The first issue is usercentred development and the role of users and their goals driving software development. User-centred development is usually conceived by software developers has a methodological guidance towards bringing users into the development lifecycle and iterating design alternatives. Here we discuss that the major advantage of user-centred development to software engineering is the intrinsic capability of driving development in a way that helps reduce the complexity of software projects, add-value to users and business and detect important software architecture problems. In this paper we present and contrast several examples from the Unified Process and the agile methods literature with a new proposal specifically tailored for interactive systems. We then argue that usability and userinterface concerns have an important impact on software-architecture.
The development of Web-based Information Systems is crucial in the quest to maintain and develop ... more The development of Web-based Information Systems is crucial in the quest to maintain and develop the enterprise competiveness. However, capturing requirements from Business Processes (BP) is still an issue, as existing methods mostly focus, or on human aspects and the user interface, or on business concerns as rules and workflow coordination, and therefore do not specify all the Software Architectural components which are relevant for software development. We present the Goals Approach, which analyzes BPs and User Tasks and details them in the process of methodically designing and structuring the User Interface, the Business Logic and the Database of the Information System given a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. In this paper we focus on how to obtain the Goals business model of requirements based on the DEMO method. The approach can be used for in-house software development, and the method is straightforward fitting Small and Medium Enterprises agility needs.
Non-intrusive load monitoring (also known as NILM or energy disaggregation) is the process of est... more Non-intrusive load monitoring (also known as NILM or energy disaggregation) is the process of estimating the energy consumption of individual appliances from electric power measurements taken at a limited number of locations in the electric distribution of a building. This approach reduces sensing infrastructure costs by relying on machine learning techniques to monitor electric loads. However, the ability to evaluate and benchmark the proposed approaches across different datasets is key for enabling the generalization of research findings and consequently contributes to the large-scale adoption of this technology. Still, only recently researchers have focused on creating and standardizing the existing datasets in order to deliver a single interface to run NILM evaluations. Furthermore, there is still no consensus regarding, which performance metrics should be used to measure and report the performance of NILM systems and their underlying algorithms. This paper provides a review of the main datasets, metrics, and tools for evaluating the performance of NILM systems and technologies. Specifically, we review three main topics: (a) publicly available datasets, (b) performance metrics, and (c) frameworks and toolkits. The review suggests future research directions in NILM systems and technologies, including cross-datasets, performance metrics for evaluation and generalizable frameworks for benchmarking NILM technology.
This position paper discusses how UML can help bridge the gap between current object-oriented sof... more This position paper discusses how UML can help bridge the gap between current object-oriented software engineering (OOSE) practice and current human-computer interaction (HCI) practice. The paper presents WISDOM (Whitewater Interactive System Development with Object Models), an integrated, lightweight, unified modeling language (UML) based, software-engineering methodology. WISDOM is a methodology specially designed for the development of interactive software by small companies and organizations (SMEs) and it makes extensive use of object models to integrate user-centered workflows in the mainstream unified development process.
The twin crises of nature and climate is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence and increa... more The twin crises of nature and climate is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence and increasing public concern about long-term and potentially irreversible consequences of the Anthropocene. People and wildlife living today, as well as future generations, are at risk unless urgent action is taken to reverse the loss of plants, insects and other creatures on which we depend for food, clean water, and a stable climate. As urban dwellings become the main concentration of citizens, we thought of addressing these issues through a series of urban interventions aiming at educating and enhancing the user's biodiversity and sustainability awareness through play and reflection. We provide a list of preliminary insights, discussed, and shared trying to frame how these new interventions can contribute to a panorama where playful interactions in smart cities can inspire sustainable and respectful attitudes towards nature. We conclude with a constructive conversation about playful urban approaches aimed at understanding how the interaction process could be re-centered to promote environmental protection and ecological consciousness on the part of technology users. Our case studies strive to reconcile concepts and theories, about ecological computing, more than human design, biodiversity actions and nature awareness and conservation in urban settings, for the design of urban playful and enjoyable systems that promote environmental protection and ecological consciousness on the part of technology users.
Existing software modeling tools are widely recognized to be hard to use and, hence, to adopt. We... more Existing software modeling tools are widely recognized to be hard to use and, hence, to adopt. We believe those usability problems are related to a legacy of formalism-centric tools that don't promote the new challenges of modern software development. In this short paper, we briefly describe a new tool, under development, that tries to promote usability in modeling tools to support collaborative development of interactive software. It focuses on usable, real-world languages and a developer-centered design.
Existing software modeling tools are widely recognized to be hard to use and, hence, to adopt. We... more Existing software modeling tools are widely recognized to be hard to use and, hence, to adopt. We believe those usability problems are related to a legacy of formalism-centric tools that don't promote the new challenges of modern software development. In this short paper, we briefly describe a new tool, under development, that tries to promote usability in modeling tools to support collaborative development of interactive software. It focuses on usable, real-world languages and a developer-centered design.
The UML is recognized to be the dominant diagrammatic modeling language in the software industry.... more The UML is recognized to be the dominant diagrammatic modeling language in the software industry. However, it's support for building interactive systems is still acknowledged to be insufficient. There is a common misconception that the same models developed to support the design of the application internals are also adequate to support interaction design, leveraging the usability aspects of the applications. In this paper we identify and discuss the major problems using the UML to document, specify and design interactive systems. Here we propose a UML profile for interactive systems development that leverages on human-computer interaction domain knowledge under the common notation and semantics of the UML. Our proposal integrates with existing object-oriented software engineering best practice, fostering coevolutionary development of interactive systems and enabling artifact change between software engineering and human-computer interaction.
The UML is recognized to be the dominant diagrammatic modeling language in the software industry.... more The UML is recognized to be the dominant diagrammatic modeling language in the software industry. However, it's support for building interactive systems is still acknowledged to be insufficient. There is a common misconception that the same models developed to support the design of the application internals are also adequate to support interaction design, leveraging the usability aspects of the applications. In this paper we propose a minimal set of extensions for a UML profile for interactive systems development that leverages on human-computer interaction domain knowledge under the common notation and semantics of the UML. Our pro-posal integrates with existing objectoriented software engineering best practice, fostering co-evolutionary development of interactive systems and enabling artifact change between software engineering and human-computer interaction.
This paper describes an approach to adapt the use-case point estimation method to fit the require... more This paper describes an approach to adapt the use-case point estimation method to fit the requirements of agile development of interactive software. Creating product cost estimates early in the development lifecycle is a challenge for the software industry, they require substantial data from past projects and constant feedback and fine-tuning, which are rarely available or consistent through interactive software development. In addition, the profusion of incremental and evolutionary development methods (like Scrum and XP) produced new challenges with estimating frequent releases. Here we propose several changes to the original use-case point estimation method, in particular to take advantage of the enhanced information that can be extracted from usagecentered design (usageCD) that devotes particular attention to critical aspects like weighting actors and uses-cases for complexity. We propose to exploit user-roles, essential use-cases and the usageCD architecture to enhance the weighting heuristics for assigning complexity factors to actors and use-cases required to calculate the unadjusted use-case point reflecting the complexity of the requirements for a given iteration or evolution. We propose to exploit userroles as the main basis for weighting complex actors, which originally are grouped in the highest weight factor. Conversely we propose to extract the complexity of use-cases from essential use case steps depicted through user intentions and system responsibilities and also the analysis classes extract from those for the usageCD architecture. Detailing this approach the paper presents a contribution, not only to leverage more accurate early lifecycle software estimation, but also to bridge the gap between SE and HCI enabling cross-fertilization between the two disciplines.
UML has become the standard language for modelling in different areas and domains, but it is wide... more UML has become the standard language for modelling in different areas and domains, but it is widely recognized that it lacks support for User Interface Design (UID). On the other hand, ConcurTaskTree (CTT) is one of the most widely used notations for task and dialogue modelling. An important achievement is the proposed notation and semantics for CTT by extending the UML metamodel, proving that task modelling in user interface design can be accomplished by a UML compliant notation. For the interface structure design was proposed that UML's CTT could be complemented with Canonical Abstract Prototypes (CAP) leading to a model-based user interface design method co-specified by the presentation (CAP) and behaviour (UML's CTT) perspectives. In this paper we propose another step in this UID method by defining a specific model compliant with the OMG recommended Model Driven Architecture (MDA), which will be the intermediary between the design model and an implementation of the user interface. This proposal will align the UID method with the MDA recommendation making it possible to automatically generate interface prototypes from conceptual models. Abstract Prototypes, Model Driven Architecture.
In this paper, we argue that the combination of task modeling with abstract prototyping improves ... more In this paper, we argue that the combination of task modeling with abstract prototyping improves the effectiveness of the user interface design at an early stage of the development process. Currently there is no effective way to connect popular task and presentation based formalisms (e.g. ConcurTaskTrees -CTTs and Canonical Abstract Prototypes -CAPs) in interactive system development. Here we present and illustrate an approach that relates CTTs with CAPs under the common semantics of the UML 2.0. We find that an abstract prototype is more suitable as a starting point to represent and infer the task structure that supports the user interaction. Our approach is supported by the DialogSketch tool, which enables the creation, design and editing of a UML version of CAPs and CTTs that can be co-edited and simulated in an innovative way that leverages effective and usable simulation of abstract user-interfaces.
In this paper we present our approach to create an end-to-end software platform to enable the cre... more In this paper we present our approach to create an end-to-end software platform to enable the creation of meaningful and systematic, cross-dataset performance evaluations and benchmarks of Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring technology. We specifically propose a new file format to represent public datasets, a software framework to implement algorithms and metrics as well as the application of ceiling analysis to evaluate the overall performance of NILM systems.
This paper presents our efforts in understanding the long-term effects of eco-feedback devices. O... more This paper presents our efforts in understanding the long-term effects of eco-feedback devices. Our work argues that lack of long term in the wild studies is a missed opportunity to understand how these devices are used after the novelty wears off. We build on previous work that showed a significant decrease in user awareness after a short period with a relapse in consumption, with the presented studies we aimed to investigate if new forms of feedback could overcome this issue, maintaining the users awareness for longer periods of time.
This paper presents EnerSpectrum a standard wall electricity socket redesigned to present how muc... more This paper presents EnerSpectrum a standard wall electricity socket redesigned to present how much of the electricity being consumed is sourced from a renewable energy source. We build on studies that report an increase in consumer energy awareness and literacy when presented with the source of their electricity. The prototype was evaluated by 10 users using interviews, which found the concept interesting and valuable. We conclude this paper with an outline of the future work necessary to evaluate the EnerSpectrum in real live conditions.
This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of an eco-feedback system capable o... more This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of an eco-feedback system capable of providing detailed household consumption information and also real-time production breakdown per energy source. We build on recent studies reporting an increased awareness generated by ecofeedback systems that also integrate micro-production information, taking advantage of a closed grid production network on an island with a high concentration of renewables, we deployed the What-a-Watt system in a building with 9 households for a period of 34 consecutive weeks. Results show that all the participating families have shown increased awareness of the production and distribution of electricity, thus becoming more familiarized with concepts such as the different sources of energy and how their availability relates to external variables such as weather conditions and time of day. Furthermore, our results also show, that the families using our system have managed to reduce their overall consumption. This research is a first attempt to provide more effective eco-feedback systems to consumers by integrating complex Smartgrid information in the feedback.
For the last couple of decades the world has been witnessing a change in habits of energy consump... more For the last couple of decades the world has been witnessing a change in habits of energy consumption in domestic environments, with electricity emerging as the main source of energy consumed. The effects of these changes in our eco-system are hard to assess, therefore encouraging researchers from different fields to conduct studies with the goal of understanding and improving perceptions and behaviors regarding household energy consumption. While several of these studies report success in increasing awareness, most of them are limited to short periods of time, thus resulting in a reduced knowledge of how householders will behave in the long-term. In this paper we attempt to reduce this gap presenting a long-term study on household electricity consumption. We deployed a real-time non-intrusive energy monitoring and ecofeedback system in 12 families during 52 weeks. Results show an increased awareness regarding electricity consumption despite a significant decrease in interactions with the eco-feedback system over time. We conclude that after one year of deployment of eco-feedback it was not possible to see any significant increase or decrease in the household consumption. Our results also confirm that consumption is tightly coupled with independent variables like the household size and the income-level of the families.
This paper presents a low-cost framework for non-intrusive home energy monitoring and research bu... more This paper presents a low-cost framework for non-intrusive home energy monitoring and research built on top of Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) concepts and techniques. NILM solutions are already considered low-cost alternatives to the big majority of existing commercial energy monitors but the goal of this work is to make its cost even lower by using a mini netbook as a packaged solution. The mini netbook is installed in the home's main circuit breaker panel and computes power consumption by reading current and voltage through the built-in sound card. At the same time, feedback to the users is provided using the 11'' LCD screen as well as other built-in I/O modules. The meter is also capable of detecting changes in power consumption and tries to find out which appliance lead to that change. It is believed that such a system will not only be important as a tool for energy monitoring and feedback, but also serve as an open system that can be easily changed to accommodate and test new or existing non-intrusive load monitoring techniques.
This paper discusses two important issues about integrating SE and HCI. The first issue is userce... more This paper discusses two important issues about integrating SE and HCI. The first issue is usercentred development and the role of users and their goals driving software development. User-centred development is usually conceived by software developers has a methodological guidance towards bringing users into the development lifecycle and iterating design alternatives. Here we discuss that the major advantage of user-centred development to software engineering is the intrinsic capability of driving development in a way that helps reduce the complexity of software projects, add-value to users and business and detect important software architecture problems. In this paper we present and contrast several examples from the Unified Process and the agile methods literature with a new proposal specifically tailored for interactive systems. We then argue that usability and userinterface concerns have an important impact on software-architecture.
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Papers by Nuno J Nunes