At long last, environmental awareness is in the public consciousness. As a designer entering the arena of awareness projects, there are several products to analyze and learn from. It is a delicate path to tread around people's guilt, fear, meaning, habit, identity... Following is a survey and comparison of two recent projects.

Funded by the Swedish Energy Agency, STEM, the Aware project is a group of product designs created at the Interactive Institute. The Puzzle Switch looks visually misaligned when it is on but aligned when off. According to the researchers, people have an underlying sense of order that the switch appeals to in its “off” position. The Power Aware Cord is a power strip whose cord contains electro-luminescent wires. The EL wires glow when power is coursing through the cord, perhaps making the user feel guilty about energy use and unplugging.

Ambient Devices, a spin-off company from the MIT Media Lab, has developed a plug-in device, the Power Joule, which registers information about the cost of electricity and overall load on the grid. This device gets plugged into a socket somewhere in the house and, supposedly, is monitored by the household as the basis for making choices regarding energy use. Unfortunately there is no connection between the device and any actual appliance, putting it outside of the patterns of use. Its passive situation and absence of any interactive features would seem render it practically invisible.

Both of these products have their hearts in the right place, but seem to fall flat when it comes to maintaining a users long-term interest. The Power Joule takes the step to include dynamic data in its read-out, but makes it almost as invisible and removed from any actual power switching activity as the external meter on the house.

Switch Critters differ from the above projects in that the Critters are more present and less overtly didactic. They are idiosyncratic, playful Critters and, at the same time, light switches. As such they call on a user to think in two modes, one focused on the activity of switching and one on the behavior of the object. The situation poses questions and tempts meaning: How is the Critter connected to the electrical system? Why? In Herztian Tales, Anthony Dunne writes:

The fit between ideas and things, particularly where an abstract idea dominates practicality, allows design to be a form of discourse, resulting in poetic interventions that, by challenging laws (physical, social, or political) rather than affirming them, take on a critical function. Such electronic objects would be conceptual tools operating through a language of functionality that is entangled in a web of cultural and social systems that go beyond appearance. (page 42)

Designed and situated as Anthony Dunne suggests, instead of trying to “solve” people’s energy consumption habits, Switch Critters pose a question and initiate thought around the activity of switching. However, unlike Dunne’s critical design practice, Switch Critters exist as an earnest proposal for designed objects that could exist in everyday culture, outside of museums and galleries.