Design Distinction

Preserve

Presented with several "awareness" devices intended to make home energy use visible in invasive or subliminal ways, the jury finally decided on Preserve, "a more artistic version of the power meter" as Caplowe called it.

Thomas Brisebras and Jennifer Leonard of IDEO in Palo Alto, California, wanted to convince consumers to become their own regulators by becoming "more intimately engaged with energy over time." A metaphor for time running out, the hourglass houses a mechanism that allows its owner to set a limit for the total household energy use for the day. When the owners go over their self-allotted limit, Preserve cuts off the juice, and shuts down all the electrical devices. When owners need to take a break from their tough standards, they can simply set the device on its side to turn it off. In other words, the design team says, "This attractive interface…makes visible the invisible, and it makes concrete the abstract."

Design IDEO (Palo Alto, CA): Thomas Brisebras, designer;
Jennifer Leonard, writer