StoryBoard

Written Description

Idea - I will be creating an application for a iPhone, iPod touch and/or iPad. The idea of this application is to make people aware of their energy consumption. This will be done by creating an emotional attachment to the users energy. The app is a garden game called Eplants (short for Energy plants). The Idea is that each energy type will be represented by a plant ; Electricity = electric plant , Water = water plant , Petrol = petrol plant. The energy consumption of a household will determine how healthy the pants are. If to much energy is used then the plants will begin to die. Each plant has human features to strengthen the attachment to the plants. There is also a game for each plant. These allows you to earn fertilizer for your plants which helps keep the plants healthy. If the user has not saved energy then the game is made a lot harder, penalty's will make the game harder and you will also not earn much fertilizers for your plant. There are scores for each game which can be shared online and be compared with other users. . The app is meant to make the user care for the plants and the games keep the user more interested. If the user cares for the plants then ultimately the user will care about their energy consumption.

Development

This is the designs for the main menu and the icon for the application

These are sketch ideas for different plants

This has information about the plants and the design for the water plant

 This has the design for the petrol plant and electric plant

These two pages have the ideas and the design of the games on them

Possible Ideas

Brainstorm Ideas

This is a brainstorm i wrote to generate ideas for my energy project

Research

Plants Vs Zombies was a good application to draw inspiration from. It can help me to design the plants that are suitable for there energy type. It is also good inspiration for ideas on the garden i will be creating.

 here is a link for info in the app -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plants_vs._Zombies

Energy Research

Kilowatt hour (kWh):
The kilowatt hour, or kilowatt-hour, (symbol kW·h, kW h or kWh) is a unit of energy equal to 1000 watt hours or 3.6 megajoules. For constant power, energy in watt hours is the product of power in watts and time in hours. The kilowatt hour is most commonly known as a billing unit for energy delivered to consumers by electric utilities.

Examples:

A heater rated at 1000 watts (1 kilowatt), operating for one hour uses one kilowatt hour (equivalent to 3.6 megajoules) of energy.

Using a 60 watt light bulb for one hour consumes 0.06 kilowatt hours of electricity. Using a 60 watt light bulb for one thousand hours consumes 60 kilowatt hours of electricity.  Really interesting site on how much energy computers use: http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html

Whats a Kill a Watt? The Kill A Watt is an electricity usage monitor marketed by P3 International. It features a large LCD display and it enables cost forecasting. It measures the energy used by individual appliances plugged into the meter, as opposed to in-home energy use displays, which display the energy used by an entire household. The name is a play on the word kilowatt.  

http://www.claw.gov.uk/index.php?id=89&L=0 

Observing Energy Use

Studio Work

In this studio session, we were divided up into small groups where we would go off and research a certain topic which was given to us by our tutors.

In my group we had to research "Social Networks and Comparing Personal Data" This is the information that we found:
 A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes" which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.
 The first type of social network was to allow users to compile a list of friends and search for other users with similar interest.
WHO: 51. 90% of internet users know at least one social network. This influences quite a lot of people.
WHAT: photos, videos, personal info eg DOB, name sex. Also competition on game scores.
WHERE: Everywhere.
WHY: Keep updated with friends. Competitions between people. Businessess
It makes life easier eg you are able to talk to people all over the world.
Easy to find friends and family. You can literally find anybody.
HOW: (how do we share personal data?) Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, myspace, nike, blogging.
Learning sites for young people eg maths. They are able to share their intelligence with other people. Competition as well as a learning site.

Examples
http://www.funbrain.com/
http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/
http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.youtube.com/

Project 2

In this project you are asked to design an interactive application, service or tool that helps people to reduce their energy consumption. You can either decide to design the interface for an energy- monitoring device for a certain user group, or you can design a social networking service that allows comparison of energy usage amongst specific users, or you can address the problem in a more visionary way and come up with your own ideas.