Does data visualization affect users' understanding of electricity consumption?

Different data visualizations are investigated for how they enable occupants to learn about domestic energy consumption. Smart metering can potentially encourage householders to change their behaviour and save energy. However, concerns exist about whether users understand domestic energy feedback. Two challenges are addressed: feedback displays typically show aggregate consumption and they show time-series data visualizations, which are difficult to relate to everyday actions in the household. A laboratory experiment (N = 43) assessed changes in participants’ knowledge of how much electricity everyday actions consume after being exposed to different forms of energy-consumption data visualizations: (1) an aggregated time-series line graph, (2) a disaggregated time-series line graph and (3) a normalized disaggregated visualization that deemphasized time. Participants played an energy game both before and after they saw the simulation. Participants in condition (3) were more accurate and more confident in their post-test judgments about everyday domestic electricity consumption than other participants. These findings suggest that the type of data visualization affects users’ understanding of domestic electricity consumption. The visualization of disaggregated energy feedback at the appliance level should be considered for future generations of technology