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Two Stanford students rethink the light switch

Peter Russo and Brendan Wypich have found a way to combine the Ambient Orb, the EcoPedal, and the competitive utility bill into one amazing nudge. As second year master’s students in the Stanford Design Program, the two have designed what they are calling a SmartSwitch, which lets people know how much energy they are using, not through colors, but through tactile feedback. It was recently named a semi-finalist in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition. We asked the two to describe their technology in a guest post for the Nudge blog. If you like the idea, you can vote for SmartSwitch here.

smartswitch

Continue reading the post here.

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This entry was posted on February 20, 2009 at 5:06 am and is filed under Blog posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Two Stanford students rethink the light switch”

  1. Steve Booth Says:
    February 20, 2009 at 8:25 pm | Reply

    i clicked though because of your title (it mentioned Stanford). I don’t quite get their light switch (does it shock you if you turn up the light too much? 🙂 ). But I do know that two years ago I switched from incandescent bulbs to CFLs and they use about 75% less electricity I think. I know our electric bill has dropped substantially, and the light switch “feels better” when we use it. 🙂 Go Stanford! ~ Steve Booth

  2. Jamie Says:
    February 26, 2009 at 10:04 am | Reply

    Thanks for highlighting this. I’ve written a brief post on how SmartSwitch fits into the Persuasive Technology discourse (also arising from Stanford) here if any other readers are interested:
    http://designandbehaviour.rsablogs.org.uk/2009/02/26/a-tactile-feedback-giving-network-enabled-lightswitch/

  3. Tom Booth Says:
    August 10, 2009 at 10:41 pm | Reply

    Wow, that is an amazing advancement – good job guys!

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