“The mission of L3D is to establish the scientific foundations for the envisionment, design, development, and assessment of socio-technical systems that serve as amplifiers of human capabilities and that will bring dramatic and transformative improvements in the ways people live, learn, work, and collaborate.”
Our areas of application have ranged across topics including the design of software and windowing environments, kitchen design, network design, citizen participation in urban planning and transportation design, and support systems for individuals with cognitive disabilities. This talk will give an overview of a more recent area of application for our approaches: The Energy Sustainability Domain.The first part of the talk will describe Our initial involvement in this area, which was based on the observation that most efforts in the Smart Grid area have been focused on new technologies and automation with less attention how to the cognitive and social aspects, coupled with new technologies, could amplify the impact of these system on sustainable behavior.The second part of the talk will describe one project that bridges between our prior work in community  engagement in urban planning and design with community aspects of understanding and improving energy-use behavior.