Evolving Gamified Smart Communities in Mexico to Save Energy in Communities through Intelligent Interfaces

• Published in: Energies (Basel) 2022-08, Vol.15 (15), p.5553
• Main Authors: Méndez, Juana Isabel, Medina, Adán, Ponce, Pedro, Peffer, Therese, Meier, Alan, Molina, Arturo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: ANN; Behavior; Communication; Dashboards; Design; Electricity; Electricity consumption; Energy; Energy consumption; Gamification; gamified communities; HMI; Households; HVAC; Interfaces; Neural networks; Personality; personality traits; Poverty; Product development; Quality of life; Relative humidity; Residential areas; Residential energy; Smart cities; Smart houses; socially connected products; Software; Usability
• ISSN: 1996-1073; 1996-1073
• DOI: 10.3390/en15155553

In 2021, the residential sector had an electricity consumption of around 39% in México. Householders influence the quantity of energy they manage in a home due to their preferences, culture, and economy. Hence, profiling the householders’ behavior in communities allows designers or engineers to build strategies that promote energy reductions. The household socially connected products ease routine tasks and help profile the householder. Furthermore, gamification strategies model householders’ habits by enhancing services through ludic experiences. Therefore, a gamified smart community concept emerged during this research as an understanding that this type of community does not need a physical location but has similar characteristics. Thus, this paper proposes a three-step framework to tailor interfaces. During the first step, the householder type and consumption level were analyzed using available online databases for Mexico. Then, two artificial neural networks were built, trained, and deployed during the second step to tailor an interactive interface. Thus, the third step deploys an interactive and tailored dashboard. Moreover, the research analysis reflected the predominant personality traits. Besides, some locations have more electricity consumption than others associated with the relative humidity, the outdoor temperature, or the poverty level. The interactive dashboard provides insights about the game elements needed depending on the personality traits, location, and electricity bill. Therefore, this proposal considers all householders (typical and non-typical users) to deploy tailored interfaces designed for smart communities. Currently, the game elements proposed during this research are reported by the literature, so their adoption is assured.