Living in developed countries with superior infrastructures and seemingly unlimited access to the ubiquitous things, the creators of smART noted that we as a society tend to forget: resources are not infinite and need to be taken care of. Current smart home solutions for regulating and optimising consumption give little to no information to the user on their behaviour and routine.

Although every device in our home is a data touchpoint, hardly any of this is reflected in our living space, where we most need it. smART takes this data out of the digital world and brings it into our homes to better inform and motivate us.

(left, above) smART installed to highlight feedback

It is not just a delightful and dynamic art installation, but also a companion which responds to our behaviour in real-time. It captures our attention by changing its appearance – a gentle reminder that nature is constantly being influenced by our behaviour as it highlights the homeowners energy consumption throughout the day as displayed by the textile gradually losing its colour.

I really loved this innovative concept as I found it is exciting to see how designers can combine different practices like textile design into user experience design to create a living art piece. It was interesting to see how the creators of smART were able to evolve data visualisation into something tangible and abstract; utilising colour and symbolism rather than overwhelming, traditional data feedback like graphs and numbers. As the creators noted:

“Current solutions for tracking personal data rely heavily on numbers, graphs and alerts. All of these things are hard to form an emotional relationship with. Moving objects on the other hand are fascinating to people because we ascribe life to them and want to take care of them. Data presented in a tangible and easily understandable way creates intrinsic motivation to change one’s behaviour.”

It is also very relevant to note that this project introduces a lot of the interesting themes proposed by ChangeMakers to promote sustainability, including water and energy; and ethical consumption.