Psychological Light Switch

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LUX Light Switch

Nurturing Energy Saving Habits

Using a psychological cue to remind users of the lights state, providing an external motivation to turn it off.

This not only saves bill payers significant amounts of money on wasted electricity from lighting, but also creates energy efficient habits in other areas of energy consumption through the behavioural psychology principle of conditioning, greatly reducing overall energy use.

An estimated £29M in bill payer money is wasted DAILY in the UK from lights being left on when they aren’t required.

Using current switches becomes so habitual users are completely disconnected from the impact they are having on their electricity bill. By creating a more conscious and heavily weighted relationship between user, switch and light source the average user could save £100’s of pounds on their annual energy bill.

Observations showed 2 types of energy consumer: those responsible for the bill and those who are not. Furthermore the scenario of light-left-on instances can be placed into one of two categories: those where the occupant of the room is consciously aware of the state of the light and those where they are not. From my research I made 2 key insights:

Bill payers will leave the light on if they are not aware of the lights state.

Non bill payers often leave lights on even when they have a conscious awareness of the lights state or not.

Concept Generation.

Concept A: Use sensors to automate light operation.

I found a low powered radiation sensor which consumed considerably less than leaving on the light. Testing showed that the sensor could be easily integrated into a switch, controlled manually and would be ideal in stopping ‘unaware of light state’ instances.

Concept B: Use a psychological cue to encourage better behaviour.

I investigated several ways to draw the users attention to the switch as they leave a room, including using shadows, small lights and contrasting colours, thus alerting them to the lights state.