Eco-Garden is a shared physical data sculpture designed to be an aesthetically pleasing object that communicates household consumption information in a friendly manner to children and adults in households. Households are able to visualise their consumption (for electricity, gas, and food waste) and be motivated to collaboratively work towards reducing it.
Eco-Garden is a result of a three-year long Human-Centered Design (HCD) process (2021 to 2024). The researchers went through a four-phased HCD process designing several low to medium fidelity prototypes and getting user feedback.
How it works: Eco-Garden is a wooden box with three disks for electricity use practices, gas use practices, and food waste practices, which are colour-coded as blue, yellow, and green, respectively. A flower sits on each disk, and a bee is attached to one of the petals which is considered as the beginning petal. The smaller flowers around each disk are connected to Addressable LEDs, which correspond to a configurable target set by users through Eco-Garden’s companion mobile application which displays detailed consumption data. The disks follow the functioning of a traditional wall clock. Initially, Eco-Garden starts with the beginning petal with the bee, at the 12 o’clock position (representing a consumption of 0). The bees gradually rotate clockwise throughout the week to show consumption, while one lit LED in each disk shows the customised target. The bees are updated every hour. The idea is not to let the bee roate beyond the target. After the set time period, the Eco-Garden resets itself (bees rotate back to zero, and user sets a target for the new week) and continues the process with new data for the next week.
Sources:
- Perera et al. (2024) Eco-Garden: A Data Sculpture to Encourage Sustainable Practices in Everyday Life in Households
- Perera et al. (2024) Exploring the design of physical artefacts to visualise household consumption
- Perera et al. (2025) Eco-Garden: Fostering Sustainable Practices
- Eco-Garden Demonstration video
- Eco-Garden Short introductory video
- Eco-Garden Project page