User Analysis
Home owners
User A is a home owner who has some familiarity with desktop applications and mobile phone apps.
He would like to be able to turn devices on and off from outside the house and to keep track of the total energy consumption of the appliances in his house.
He prefers an app that would require little to no maintenance, but would enable the user to change the settings. He would like to be able to buy energy from cheaper sources, when possible, meaning that the ability to sell energy is also important.
He would like the system to be able to access current pricing and automatically turn devices on and off or change their set point, depending on the current energy cost.
He does not want to deal with passwords and complicated security settings.
Shared home users, with roommates
User B is a young male who recently graduated from college. He rents an apartment and shares it with a roommate. Although he and his roommate have different life styles and thus different energy consumption patterns, they receive one gross energy bill each month, and evenly split up the cost. He thus wants to know more fine-grained information that correlates to each individual’s profile.
He is up to date with new technologies. His computer experience is mostly on desktop computers. But he can learn to operate touch screen devices quickly. With a tablet, he will use it at home on a weekly or monthly basis. With a smart phone, he will use it at any time.
He doesn't have detailed knowledge on how much each individual device consumes, but is curious to know. He doesn't have much smart grid knowledge. With the application, he just wants to know the overall energy and cost savings.
He is concerned with security and privacy. If the application can operate via Internet, he wants to make sure it's secure and manages privacy right.
Business users
User C is an executive at a manufacturing company. He is interested in monitoring the energy consumption of his office building, warehouse, and manufacturing plant. He seeks to minimize overall energy costs and to make his facility more "green." Thus, he would like to view high-level reports about the total energy consumption in each area of the facility (office/warehouse/plant) and associated monetary costs.
He is familiar with energy conservation and reuse technologies, some of which are currently implemented in his facility. He would like the ability to resell any excess reclaimed energy back to the power company.
The warehouse and plant areas tend to be noisy, dirty, and dangerous. He would prefer to use the application from the office building, so the ability to manage devices remotely is important.
The facility contains many devices of different types--some standard (such as computers) and others nonstandard (such as manufacturing equipment). Therefore, the application should scale well to accommodate large numbers and types of devices. User C would like to be able to define custom groupings for the devices, organizing them by type or location, for instance.
He would share these energy-management tasks with a small number of other employees. The application should provide a secure interface to grant access to multiple users.
Both User C and the other employees who would use the application are fully literate, have extensive computer experience, and have business knowledge. However, some have limited experience with touchscreen mobile devices. User C would expect to offer training to his employees before having them work with the application. They would use the application on a daily or weekly basis.
Task Analysis
Monitor energy consumption of each device, and of groups of devices
- Present the smart devices available in the facility in an organized manner
- Aggregated consumption information of the entire facility is easily accessible
- Aggregated consumption information for each device is easily accessible
- Allow consumption information be broke up by time periods
Users will be able to monitor the current energy consumption of each device. They will also be able to view historical usage information for each device, broken up by time period, and see aggregated usage information for groups of devices.
In order for users to interpret the data, they will require a basic understanding of energy and the units it is measured in. They will also need to know which devices are being monitored by the application.
The information should be clearly labeled and units should be provided. Each device should be recognizably named, and devices should be able to be organized into user-defined, named groups. Users will often want to get a quick, high-level view of their consumption patterns, so the information should be easily glanceable.
Control devices
- Present an interface for user to control the devices, such as turning them on/off or changing settings
Users will be able to control devices from the application, turning them on and off or changing their settings.
In order to perform this task, users will need to understand the functionality of a device and the meaning of its settings. When choosing settings, users may take into account the current status of the device (for instance, is the dishwasher currently washing dishes?), its current and historical usage information, and the current and historical prices of power, as provided by the grid.
View price information received from grid
- Notify users on the energy prices of peak time and non-peak time received from the grid
- Notify users of the prices for selling power
- Store the information so user can review the historical data and future scheduled data
Sell generated power back to utility company
- Present interface for user to sell the extra power back to the grid
- Allow user to view the scheduled selling transaction
- Allow user to cancel a pending transaction or an on-going transaction in case such needs arise