For a scrap of colored tape

For the past few years, I’ve received a two-page energy report comparing electricity consumption in our home with household data in the neighborhood of Pacific Gus and Electric, our California utility, in the mail.

Here is an interesting excerpt from the last report; Click both pictures for full page viewing.


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These inferior results are especially annoying because I overdid it, but I made sure that all my electrical appliances met the Energy Star standard, I use LED lamps almost everywhere, we set up a thermostat properly, and nothing else. I have no particular reason to be upset about this stupid report on energy consumption, according to which we spend 33% more energy than similar houses in our area. But still ... I have to win this race. Leave as it is, I can not.

• Installed Nest 2.0 Learning Thermostat .
• I made sure that all the bulbs in our house that are often used are LED. Fortunately, more or less normal light bulbs of $ 16 each appeared on Amazon, which, consuming 9, give 60 equivalent watts without the problems of early LEDs (color, dimming, size, weight, etc.).
• Even in the refrigerator and freezer LED lamps appeared.
• Replaced the shower head to economical .
• Updated water heater - now it is a flowing Noritz NCC1991-SV .
• I almost died trying to hang a chandelier with LEDs on the mount in our dining room. There were 18 of these damned things on the candelabra, because of our twins in the house they use it often. It turns out that if you multiply 18 by any number ... you get a large number. The number in dollars.

(Most of the list did not help with the report. The question about the Nest thermostat and the chandelier with LED lights is still open, because I haven’t been able to get to know them well enough. Oh yes, I’ll figure it out !)

I am ashamed to admit that only recently I realized that this technique - having a set of indicators alongside your rivals' indicators - coincides with the way we built Stack Overflow and Stack Ixchunge. Notice similarities on the user profile page?



You swindled me, forcing me to become a maniac analysis and energy saving consumption of my home. Something benefits not only me, but more people, and, in a broader sense, benefits the whole world. You cheated me into my own game. Great job, Pacific Gas & Electric. Great job.



This motivated chip, call it gamification, if necessary , works in action. Therefore, we use it. But such systems are like weapons: so powerful that they are somewhat dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing. If you don’t think deeply about what you are promoting, why you are encouraging it, and what the consequences may be from unexpected behaviors in your system, you can get ... something is not right. Very wrong.

The key point that we encountered was that our users became completely dependent on these numbers. Even though Consumating.com could get nothing at all for points, not even a gold star, users had an insatiable desire to get them. We have seen people cling to useless glasses so strongly that no material reward was required except these glasses. We did not need to allow points to be exchanged for goods — material or not. Enough reward for most people was just to see how the points counter jumps up. If only we could turn this dependence into something with real value!

Since I quit Stack XCing I have found it difficult to explain to others what I do. Finally, this question was resolved as follows: I do this, I am better than the others in what I love most in the world - this is designing multiplayer games for people who like to type paragraphs of text for each other. I channel their dependencies — and mine — into something positive, something from which they can learn, something that creates wonderful, reusable artifacts for the whole world. And I hope to continue to do this, since I still have a whole bottomless well of dependence.

Just ask "Pacific Gas & Electric".