Residential Energy Efficiency Mobile App
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Residential Energy Efficiency Mobile App
The NBCC Mobile First Technology initiative developed a mobile Web app, the Upgrade Planner, which helps helps people understand how energy can be conserved various parts of their home and enables them to keep a personalized checklist of corresponding energy saving upgrades they have made.
Research topics
energy saving, environment, mobile Web apps, mobile–first development, persuasive design, responsive app development, RESTful Web services
This project was focused on the design and development of Upgrade Planner, a mobile app that helps people understand how energy can be conserved various parts of their home and enables them to keep a personalized checklist of corresponding energy saving upgrades they have made.
This project was a companion to an earlier MFTi project: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Improving Public Education, Awareness, and Behaviour Change. The earlier project informed the design and development of the Upgrade Planner mobile app.
Upgrade Planner was a re-design of a desktop application commissioned by Efficiency New Brunswick app called Understanding Your Consumption. The older app had been built in Adobe Flash, which has limited compatibility with popular smartphones and tablets. Upgrade Planner brought the educational value of the Understanding Your Consumption application to a wide range of mobile platforms. Additionally, Upgrade Planner gave new functionality to Understanding Your Consumption by enabling users to check off energy saving upgrades they have made to the home over time. Their data are maintained in personalized accounts in a Web service.
Compatibility with smartphones, tablets, as well as desktop and laptop computers, was achieved through the use of a responsive, mobile–first framework to develop the user interface. A framework based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript called Bootstrap was used to implement the user interface. A RESTful Web service was built to create and manage user accounts and personalized check lists. The Web service was built using Ruby on Rails.
NBCC Team
- Laura Melles, Ben Breen, Nigel Martin, NBCC Research Technicians & Alumni
- Dan Nkwetta, NBCC Instructor
- William McIver Jr., Principal investigator
Client–Collaborator
- Tracey Somers, Efficiency New Brunswick (now part of NB Power)
Funders
- Natural Resources Canada, Clean Energy Programs – Ecoenergy Efficiency Project
- Efficiency New Brunswick
- National Sciences and Engineering Research Council - Industrial Research Chair for Colleges
More information
- Upgrade Planner Mobile Web app
- NBCC Alumni Influencing Energy Efficiency Video
- Presentation [1]
Publications
- W. McIver Jr. Natural Resources Canada (Nrcan), Clean Energy Programs – Ecoenergy Efficiency Project: Residential Energy Efficiency Mobile App, New Brunswick Community College – Mobile First Technology initiative, Technical Report, 2015-03-31. [PDF]
Project contact
William McIver Jr.
