Fridge Game - Energy Saving Solution

By Sijie Yang | Stephanie Louraine

This project was about imagining a future where Whirlpool wishes to encourage and persuade people to adopt more energy-saving behavior. In the spirit of slow change, our team were faced with the challenge of creating a design solution that encourages and persuades instead of just informing. Our research unfolded that considerable amount of energy and money can be saved by adopting proper fridge door opening and closing behaviours in the long run. Kowning that constantly remembering to take energy saving actions is difficult and appliance use behavior is passed down through generations, we determined to focus on influencing children's behavior through gamification concepts. In other words, play games, save energy.

Establishing and maintaining energy saving habits is a lifetime task. It could be achieved by instilling such consciousness into people’s minds through not only rational osmosis, but also emotional appeal. Our intended purpose is helping people begin to build energy saving awareness as well as good habits during their childhood. We approach to this goal by engaging all family members into a synergetic gaming experience which encourages them to adopt desirable appliance using behaviors. We believe that, on a daily basis, both children and their parents who are involved in this participation will have mutual positive influence on each other. As time goes by, based on the emotional connection set up between gaming experience and favourable habits, energy saving behaviors will become children’s conditioned response and emerge as subtle routines in a subconscious way.