Eco-Garden: A Data Sculpture to Encourage Sustainable Practices in Everyday Life in Households

Abstract

Household consumption significantly impacts climate change. Al- though interventions that make households aware of their consump- tion exist, tailoring the design to each home’s needs remains chal- lenging. To address this, we developed Eco-Garden, a data sculp- ture designed to visualise household consumption aiming to pro- mote sustainable practices. Eco-Garden serves as both an aesthetic piece for visitors and a functional tool for household members to understand their resource consumption. In this paper, we present the human-centred design process of Eco-Garden and the prelim- inary findings we made through the field study. We conducted a field study with 15 households to explore participants’ experience with Eco-Garden and its potential to encourage sustainable prac- tices at home. Our participants provided positive feedback on inte- grating Eco-Garden into their homes, highlighting considerations such as aesthetics, physicality, calm manner of presenting con- sumption data. Our Insights contribute to developing data sculp- tures for households that can facilitate meaningful interactions with consumption data.