Energy advisors at work: charity work practices to support people in fuel poverty

Fischer, Joel E.; Costanza, Enrico; Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.; Colley, James A.; Rodden, Tom

Abstract

We present an ethnographic study of energy advisors working for a charity that provides support, particularly to people in fuel poverty. Our fieldwork comprises detailed observations that reveal the collaborative, interactional work of energy advisors and clients during home visits, supplemented with interviews and a participatory design workshop with advisors. We identify opportunities for Ubicomp technologies that focus on supporting the work of the advisor, including complementing the collaborative advice giving in home visits, providing help remotely, and producing evidence in support of accounts of practices and building conditions useful for interactions with landlords, authorities and other third parties. We highlight six specific design challenges that relate the domestic fuel poverty setting to the wider Ubicomp literature. Our work echoes a shift in attention from energy use and the individual consumer, specifically to matters of advice work practices and the domestic fuel poverty setting, and to the discourse around inclusive Ubicomp technologies.

Citation

Fischer, J. E., Costanza, E., Ramchurn, S. D., Colley, J. A., & Rodden, T. Energy advisors at work: charity work practices to support people in fuel poverty. Presented at ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2014)

• Conference Name: ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2014)
• End Date: Sep 17, 2014
• Publication Date: Sep 13, 2014
• Deposit Date: Jan 29, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 29, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Energy, Fuel Poverty, Low Income, Advisors, Charity, Non-Profit, Ethnography, Home Visits
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/735987
• Publisher URL: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2632048.2636081
• Additional Information: Published in UbiComp'14: proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing : September 13-17, Seattle, WA, USA. New York : ACM, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-4503-2968-2. pp. 447-458, doi: 10.1145/2632048.2636081