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Jazz calculator is a flash web site advertising the new eco-fuel VW Passat. It compares its low carbon emissions with the emissions a jazz band generate while playing (breathing generates CO2..). Even if the comparison is quite absurd (that’s the point) I think that its persuasion intent, to show how small the car emissions are, is pretty effective. This idea is quite in line with some of the discussions we’ve had at persuasion, and in line with carbon.to.

By DDB stockholm

The same agency developed a similar idea for the iphone, where your breathing emissions when blowing in the iphone mic were compared with how many km the car could drive emitting the same.

The usability of carbon dioxide information from sustainablecommunications on Vimeo.

Small presentation part of the World Usability Day 2009 activities. Disclaimer: I was sick so I was a bit slow and drowsy.

Via Engadget

(Met some of the people working there when at Berkeley last spring)

At greengaged they set up a confession cabin for lightening our environmental souls. I think it is a pretty interesting topic they are pointing out.

Photography by Travis Drever

Info at : Greenengaged.

The light novel (adapted to anime) Shangri-la presents a dystopical future where the economy market is ruled by the trade of carbon emissions. It plays with concepts as carbon taxes, carbon police corp, turning tokyo into a jungle absorbing carbon, carbon economical speculation… It is set in a high technological world where physical books are banned (cutting trees for storing information.. so last century). It seems that climate change and carbon dioxide reduction are now part of our social imaginaries.

More info // See (legally) online

During this year there where around 1300 visits, which is probably more than I expected specially with the low frequency of writing. So thank you to all that have been here! Please comment if you would like to see some concrete improvement.

Now I’m taking a month break, getting married and enjoying the summer. The blog will be back in August with renewed energy and new posts!

Here is the abstract:

We have a personal relationship with mobile phones, since they are closer to us than any other technological device. They are ubiquitous (60% of the world population owns one), individual, and pervasive through our lifestyle (we have them with us all the time and everywhere). These modern devices are nearly as powerful as personal computers, always connected to Internet and loaded with sensors like GPS and accelerometers. These mobile devices offer the opportunity to persuade users to change attitudes and behaviors towards personal health and environmental issues. For this paper we will focus on the design of a mobile application for reducing in carbon dioxide emissions, using the definition of “Climate Persuasive Services” that can change personal attitudes and behaviors regarding climate change for reducing greenhouse gases emissions. The paper presents design practices that have resulted in a prototype mobile application.

I will post the pdf soon.

Here is the abstract:

ICT has reshaped our society, and with the current accelerating development of technology, and its wider distribution throughout the globe, they will continue doing so even more. These changes in society are important for sustainability. They affect the physical way the society and the environment interact, but they also affect the way people think, learn and behave.

We suggest that the persuasive power of ICT can be oriented towards climate change. For this purpose we define the concept of “climate persuasive services” as ICT applications that change personal attitudes regarding climate change and/or change behavior towards reducing greenhouse gases emissions. We consider mobile phones, pervasive sensors and social media as three key technological drivers for the development of climate persuasion applications.

We have analyzed the use of persuasion principles in existing web and mobile applications forming three clusters: tracking carbon footprints, sharing goals and making green behavior easier. Based on this analysis, we suggest a more planned use of persuasive principles, and propose six different opportunities for improvement.

Amazon has presented a 9.7″ e-reader, an optimal size for reading PDF documents and newspapers / magazines.

Of course, as the smaller Kindle, it cannot be connected to a computer and rely on the wireless network to get the documents. And working in USA only. So I still do not see it as a solution for researchers / professionals.

More on my opinions on the future of reading.

I’ve been at Berkeley today, and I’m now sitting at a Café, drinking a capuccino and working with my laptop, surrounded with students doing the same as it’s pouring outside. Nice atmosphere. I’ll make a short resume of the meetings:

I met first with Tapan Parikh from the School of Information, when we discussed around ICT and sustainable development and I got to know more about the work they are doing around ICT for Development. I also participated in the seminar about ICTD when a the plans about researching the impact of mobile phones in Rwanda in prices, wages and in mitigating economical shocks and crisis  was presented, interesting work going on there! I’m seriously thinking that we need to change focus to developing countries, or at least have some more work on it.

Then I met with Eric Hallstein (Energy and Resources Group), Graham Bullock, and Avery Cohn (Department of Environmental Science, Policies, and Management), that are working at the Infolab, researching the use of technologies to create and provide environmental and health information to the consumers, how that impacts their behavior and developing tools to do it in the best way. One of the projects that they were part of is Good Guide, which now  they are using as data source. We had a lot of research areas / questions in common, and it was giving to discuss with them around different ideas. It would be good to have more contact with them.

The picture is actually from the Muir Woods, I couldn’t take pictures of the nice campus here as it’s raining heavily, but they had a creek and some impresing redwoods too here.

The speakers and keynotes were really interesting, and there were three intense days getting in information.

One inspiring presentation was by B.J. Fogg where he suggested a eight step design process for persuasive applications.

The main message was to start small, to do not overdo interventions trying to do everything the first time.

Pick a simple behavior that you’re able to measure and create an application that try to change it, then if it success, grow (by repeating, replicating to another behavior, make the behavior harder, scale to more people…). Do fast iterations, a bit agile style, or getting real.

He also presented a quite simplified view of where to “attack” using persuasion: First try to trigger the behavior, if it doesn’t work look if the behavior needs to be simplified, and if not, go back to increasing the motivation.

Now I’m in San Francisco for some days, I’ll keep posting some more reflections about the conference these days.

I just have arrived today after a 20 hours trip and 1 ton extra carbon dioxide to my account. The city is very cozy and the hotel Casa 425 looks terrific.

The conference will start tomorrow and I will present on Tuesday. I will both update my twitter and blog during these days to keep you informed.

After the conference I will go to San Francisco (U.C. Berkeley) and Los Angeles (UCLA)

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