Water conservation in Canberra

Last year I blogged about what I believe is an ineffective campaign by ACTEW: the deployment of electronic signs around Canberra that show current dam levels, target consumption and yesterday’s consumption.

In brief, whilst the electronic signs are better than nothing, they are meaningless. We have no idea what the target consumption represents, the actual consumption varies wildly both above and below that target and we have no idea if the current dam level and any increase is good enough and whether any rise is due to rainfall or actual positive action by Canberra citizens. In addition, the data doesn’t discern between commercial, industrial and residential use.

So by looking at that sign as you drive into work you can’t tell if we’re doing a good job saving water.

As a persuasive technology it misses the mark wildly. Besides being meaningless it’s not personally relevant and doesn’t speak to individuals. The number of variables means the information can be dismissed through any number of excuses. Without being aware of what our neighbour is doing to conserve water we have no way of knowing if we’re making a difference and contributing to a community effort or if we’re the only ones on the planet listening.

With ACTEW’s current Save 10 campaign, they’re trying to convince us to save ten litres a day and if we all do that then we’ll save 1.4 billion litres a year, a third of the capacity of the Cotter Dam. Don’t misinterpret that as meaning our dam level will be 30% higher in 12 months.

So they run these TV campaigns, electronic billboards and probably some direct mail stuff too which I’ve noticed and I don’t believe it’s working. Sure, raising awareness about water conservation is bound to have some impact but I think they can do more.

What’s the solution?

First of all ACTEW need to make the information they provide to us meaningful, relevant and practical. Watching dam levels fluctuate between 45% and 55% doesn’t mean anything to me. Should I be alarmed? Telling me Canberra has a target of 120 megalitres per day doesn’t mean anything to me. Telling me to shave one minute off my shower without knowing how long my showers are isn’t really practical.

Make a commitment to target residential water usage and deal with commercial and industrial water conservation through other avenues. By excluding commerce and industry it increases the relevancy of data to households.

Get rid of the electronic billboards or if you want keep them to remind people to not water their lawns after rain for those who can’t manage to think for themselves. Replace them with printed signs which are easier to read and focus on longer-term information, perhaps updated every couple of months.

For example: If it stopped raining, we would run out of water in 7 months. Or: At current average rainfall and water use our dam will run dry in 3 years.

Attach consequences to inaction.

Data visualisations can also be effective to show trends. Even just using graphs for the current data displayed on the electronic billboards would make them more useful than day-to-day snapshots without historic information but not by much because there’s still the vectors of rainfall and population increase that render such information invalid and thus ignorable without context.

I recommend doing away with the daily targets. We cannot as a community of 330,000 people coordinate together to meet a collective target. ACTEW should be aiming at individual residences.

ACTEW knows the water consumption of every residence because they send us bills. Do some calculations, figure out what the water consumption per person per residence should be, for example:

If you have 2 people in your house you are using 150 litres a week more than the average water-conscious household. Please see our tips on saving water. And so on. Perhaps send the bill on green or red paper depending on their performance that month or quarter. Make water conservation relevant to that particular household.

You want to encourage people who aren’t saving water to know they’re performing badly and convince them to change whilst also recognising the good work of those who are saving water and letting them know they’re doing a good job without inviting them to become complacent and start under-performing.

It’s a delicate balancing act. In the name of social innovation and citizen activism if I could just go out and make some signs up and stick them along our major roads I would but without the contextual knowledge and research that would be foolish and risk making matters worse, putting people off-side with water conservation initiatives and closing doors. This is up to the local government and ACTEW and I hope they can come up with something a bit smarter and more innovative than their campaigns to date.

For further reading on persuasive technologies and techniques I suggest Yes!: 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion and Persuasive Technology.

// purecaffeine.com: user experience design, social experience design, social media, Gov 2.0, design thinking and service design blog by designer Nathanael Boehm, Canberra, Australia. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

Related posts:

1. Social Innovation Meetup Canberra
2. Local ambassador for UXnet in Canberra
3. Data visualisation in user experience design