The Sound of the Future Home Workshop: Ideating Sonic Prototypes for Sustainable Energy Consumption

This paper describes an ideation workshop aiming to explore the intersection of sonic interactions and energy use. As part of a larger research project exploring the role that sound can play in efficient energy behaviours, the workshop encouraged users to look for overlaps between their home resource use, potential sonic feedback and the feelings and emotions elicited by both. The workshop design was successful in providing non-experts with space and tools to reflect on the complex relationship between household, sound, energy and our feelings towards them. On a more practical level, 15 "hotspots" were identified where sound and energy concerns could be potentially addressed with sonic interventions, and four speculative prototypes were developed during the workshop each one revealing original considerations and relationships between sound and energy to be developed further in future work.