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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

The missing component in all of these green initiatives aimed at changing human behavior is a simple feedback loop. Put a fucking indicator somewhere in the shower that tells people how much water they used, or better yet, energy, or better yet, carbon. Show them their week over week, month over month, etc information and positively reward them (via tone—and other UI hints—of the message, e.g., “you reduced your shower carbon by X this month! Great work!”). If you do that even my backwoods relatives who still burn their garbage will start using less and less water, even all the while talking about how climate change is all a hoax.

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I might be in a minority overall, but I really dislike gamification creeping into everyday life. I don't want some kind of cutesy "points" for showering ecologically, possibly linked to a virtual currency on an app (which conventiently also collects vital telemetry information).

The point isn't really gamification, it's providing information to the user. If you don't have any information on your consumption, you'll have a hard time reducing it even if you wanted to.

Typically, we provide that feedback by charging for resource use, and that works extremely well (most recent anecdote from my area: as the local rented garden community started measuring water usage and splitting the bill by usage instead of head count, usage dropped by 70% without any damage by under-watering), but that's generally a longer-term aggregate and immediate feedback works much better.

It’s kind of gamification, at least the bit about explicit positive reinforcement. But “neutral” feedback loops are inherently positively reinforcing, as your anecdote indicates.

I don’t like the gamification of everything either, but if the fate of the planet hinges on it (it doesn’t), I suppose I could stomach it.

I don't mind gamification personally. I'll do it to myself, even if it's just the harmless kind of "just keep running until you've reached that tree ... now that tree over there" to keep me going. Gamification works even if you know that it's gamification.

I agree that it brings up ethical issues when you're using gamification for behavior modification of others, but on the other hand it's also a bit like communication (as in "you cannot not communicate", the absence of a signal is a signal as well), when you choose not to gamify something, you're choosing to strengthen the habits that are currently in place.

I like your example, but here's some of my own: I was told as a child not to leave the tap on when brushing my teeth. There was a campaign to put a brick in your toilet cistern to reduce the amount of water used on each flush. I take more showers than baths. I have a low-flow shower, I turn it off for the bit in the middle where I'm applying the soap/gel, and I've now read an article saying that a mist shower would be even better at saving water.

None of these items is in any way quantified or measured - but all of them have or could contribute to me saving water even if none of them has a measuring device attached.

I've gone through many of the same things, up to the point where I had to beg my father to remove some of the stones because it was uncomfortable that the toilet wouldn't actually flush.

I think that one-time-actions like these are easier to do without constant feedback. Somebody measures it, explains the savings to you, you do it once, done. Usage-based savings likely require more frequent feedback unless you're somebody that has a very fine-tuned habit system.

It doesn't need to be digital feedback. Imagine you could physically see the water from a shower filling into a column of water. Let's say 70 liters might reach 6 ft. If someone could see this and wanted to use less water, then they just need to keep their showers short enough that the water fills to the 60 liter mark, then the 40 liter mark, until they're happy with their efforts. No crypto currency. No telemetry.

That I could get behind. The parent post though said "positively reward them (via tone—and other UI hints—of the message, e.g., “you reduced your shower carbon by X this month! Great work!”)" and that crosses my personal line for creepiness.

What you are referring to has significant overlaps to my concept of “libertarian paternalism,” more familiar to me as so-called “benevolent paternalism,” and was popularized by the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_paternalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)

Thank you for mentioning Kohn’s work.

It boggles my mind how super smart people just don’t get that human beings cannot be incentivized the same way rats and birds can.

Reward/punishments (same thing) kill intrinsic motivation. It has been proven countless times.

Providing feedback as in making something visible is another story altogether and can be empowering.

Speaking to people like an adult trying to manipulate 3-year olds is condescending, inappropriate and repulsive.

Not going to lie, I'd feel compelled to either completely fill, or completely empty that column.

No, I agree. While I would love to see a water meter, I don’t need the shower head making commentary like “great job!”

It might come over less childish if the system (the system's designers) didn't shy away from negativity.

being scolded by my shower is not exactly the future dystopia I imagined.

It would probably be more like:

<Cheery Computer Voice> "Water-flow will be resumed after these messages... "<Ads Play...>

Playing an ad in the shower after 5 minutes would definitely make me take shorter showers and use less water. You could be on to something there.

I can imagine that as a scene in Demolition Man

Actually it's exactly the kind of thing that gamification works for. Gamify boring scutwork that nobody (except the likely contrarian responder here) enjoys. Gamify showering, flossing, or taking out the garbage and all the tasks that people aren't deeply invested in but with existing habits they'd like to improve.

Alfie Kohn, in his book Punished by Rewards, synthesized decades of actual research results on the subject long before gamification was even minted as a term.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541132.Punished_by_Rewar...

Being able to see how many resources you have used or have left has been around since the dawn of time. A stack of logs from which you take away for example. Being able to see how much water you use is as much "gamification" as a fuel meter on a dash board.

I don’t want gamification but having the data is good. It would also be nice if I could set the shower to a certain temperature instead of guessing every time.

This sounds almost feasible if one feels comfortable to install a flow meter and a thermometer into the tap, and to hook it up with a microcontroller. Setting a certain temperature requires more work. I wonder whether there are products on the market for this already.

My parents used to have one with a mechanical thermostat. It was pretty simple and worked well once you had figured out your target temperature.

Doesn't need to be points, just feedback. In fact the GP didn't mention points. I have no idea how much water I spend in a shower. 5l? 10l? 50l? I can look up estimates, but that's it. This would be valuable feedback for many people, even without the gamification part.

> tells people how much water they used, or better yet, energy, or better yet, carbon.

If you want to really change behavior, show them how much it cost them.

You'll see usage plummet as soon as people see the $/£/€ ticking up in front of their eyes.

You’re probably right! Why not show both?

The Sunrize Izumo, one of the last two remaining japanese sleeper trainshas something like that - from necessity. The on board water supply is limitted, so a vending mashine on board sells a given ammount of shower-cards, that let you shower for an alotted number of minutes, counted with second precission on a LED display in the shower.

This way the on board shower will not run out of water & you get the opportunity to do a shower speedrun. :)

probably depends on how meaningful the cost of utilities is to you. I try to use AC and heat sparingly just because I hate the idea of waste; it really annoys me if I have to turn on the heat a few nights later because I turned on my AC too early. but my whole utility bill is ~$70/month. I don't really care too much about saving 10-20% of that.

water is far too cheap for this to work

Depends on your location. For example, this could be very effective someplace like the southwest US.

Obviously it wouldn't work everywhere, but it could work for a few people I know personally.

A patronizing talking device would just make me swear at it every time I see it.

But give me charts and graphs, and show me "You spent this much money for water/heating this week", and people will probably also be incentivized to save.

We already get the feedback, in the utility bill. If people ignore it is because the prices are too low for water and power.

A lot of people don't directly see that. For example if you rent in NYC, you have probably never seen how much water you consume, because the landlord pays the water bill. You might not even directly pay some other utilities like heat and hot water (a lot of apartment buildings have a single boiler for the entire building's heat and hot water).

I started designing this kind of device. In addition to tracking consumption, the concept had automatic mixing of hot/cold water to get good stable temperature. And a timer to facilitate non-continuous showers, press once to get wet, then soap in while shower is off, press again to rinse off.

I'm guessing you might be able to make money selling that to, e.g. the military, but not to regular people. Most take showers at least in part to relax, and that sounds like it would kill any possibility of relaxation.

Agreed, at least in volume. Which is more or less needed for a hardware product like this. There might be one can reach some thousands via the Internet, maybe using a Kickstarter type platform. But probably would quickly saturate its own niche market.

I've found such a device once in a hostel in Germany. The device was from Amphiro. [0]

Being that hostels focus on savings, I understood why such a device could be useful. As for myself, after a day-long trip it ended up being a frustating shower. The thresholds were so low that you have to take a Navy shower to have a good grade. And the polar bear display reminded me that Germany is mostly coal-powered and that a KWh here has a much bigger impact on the environment than a KWh from France.

I got out of the shower cold, wet, and worst of all, not feeling clean. I wondered if it would not have been better not to take a shower at all. It sure would have saved more water and energy.

[0]: https://www.amphiro.com/en/

Well a quick search turns up about 29.3% coal, that's a lot compared to specifically France (1.8%). That's because France is crazy into nuclear (71.6%) which the green movement made wildly unpopular in Germany (13.7%). To add one more comparison point, US is 23.5% coal and 19.7% nuclear. Natural gas is 10.5% in Germany, 7.7% in France, and 38.4% in the US.

Used these sources:

[1] D https://strom-report.de/strom/

[2] F https://www.planete-energies.com/en/medias/close/france-s-ov...

[3] US https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

I too discovered the device in a German hotel. For first-time users, it seems gamified towards the opposite goal. As I was under the shower for far longer than normal, I found out it was slowly drowning a polar bear.

Sure let's gamify everything. "Congratulations you've responded to your emails 6% faster this week! To celebrate this a $5 gift card had been added to your amazon account!"

I think this is not a tech problem, to change the behavior people need to care about the environment.

A lot of people ignore the problem because they don't see a direct correlation between what they do and the damage they are doing, it's conveniently abstracted away from their sight, I don't think gamification per se would help much but in general exposure to ones consequences would.

> I think this is not a tech problem, to change the behavior people need to care about the environment.

I fail to see how they're incompatible. GP's suggestion is a way to put the impact of people's habits in front of them rather than have that information be mixed with a hundred other signals and only available from indicators somewhere in the basement. In the same way you might use a kill-a-watt or 3 to see how much your various devices and appliances are consuming in what mode.

And having goals is a pretty well-known way to motivate people, hence the "gamification".

To change behavior you need to make people want to change, give them the ability to change, and create an environment conducive to change. Without all those pieces all bets are off.

Feedback loops are a psychological solution. Implement them without tech if you like, but good luck making that efficient. Anyway, if you have a magic wand to make enough people care enough about the environment immediately, please do wave it. :)

Absent that, I can’t imagine feedback loops are harmful with respect to our collective political will; on the contrary, I would expect daily positive feedback to change attitudes over somewhat small timescales, especially as more and more people participate and it is more normalized. But this is pure speculation and optimizing showering is not where we should spend our limited political will anyway.

This is certainly an interesting idea, but what's the initial value proposition to customers? How do you convince someone to pay extra to install such an appliance?

Agreed, also if my shower had a button that turned the water on for thirty seconds, I’d use it for a Navy shower

People will probably just learn to ignore the meter. If mist showers are so good for the environment, they should install them into every home for free, or even pay people to do it. Too many times the environmental friendly solution costs $$$, pricing out the majority of people, so only wealthy and hip people could afford to use them and virtue signal on social media about it.

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