About
Human-Centred Systems for Sustainable Living is a research group at Simon Fraser University‘s School of Interactive Arts & Technology. We are interested in the research and development of interactive systems to support sustainable living.
Reducing our ecological footprint requires not only new energy technologies but also new and more efficient energy use. But changing the way we use energy is proving challenging. A key part of this includes the homes we live in. Smart metering, wireless communication, and mobile and ubiquitous computing devices provide the technological capability to track and review consumption patterns in near real time. Our research is concerned with how we can use these technologies to help residents make better energy and resource use decisions. This introduces issues of visualization, human factors, user interface design, social computing, controls systems and engineering design. We investigate all of these aspects in this research.
West House at the Olympics Photo Credit: Keith Henderson Photography
The West House kitchen backplash is an ALIS display.
Contact Information
School of Interactive Arts + Technology (SIAT)
Simon Fraser University Surrey
250 -13450 102 Avenue
Surrey, BC, Canada
V3T 0A3
Phone: +1 778.782.7474
Fax: +1 778.782.7488
Our Team
Faculty
Dr. Lyn Bartram
Dr. Lyn Bartram is Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Arts + Technology at Simon Fraser University and director of the Human-Centred Systems for Sustainable Living research group. She leads the HCTSL related project in the GRAND NCE. Her work explores the intersecting potential of information technologies, ubiquitous computing, social media and sustainable building design in encouraging conservation and reducing our ecological footprint in our homes and personal activities. Her research draws from a background in computer science, visualization, human-computer interaction and perceptual and cognitive psychology. She has led the design and development of interactive systems for two leading-edge sustainable home projects, and works closely with public utilities, architects, designers, engineers, and municipal governments around issues of buildings, occupant behaviour and sustainability.
Dr. Bartram holds a PhD from Simon Fraser University, an M.Math from the University of Waterloo, and a Graduate Diploma from Concordia University all in Computer Science, along with a B.A in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.
email: lyn@sfu.ca
website: http://www.sfu.ca/~lyn/
Dr. Rob Woodbury
Robert Woodbury is a Professor at Simon Fraser University. He is the Director, Art and Design Practice of the Canadian Graphics, Animation, and New Media Network. His research is in computational design, visual analytics, and human-centered systems for sustainable living. He holds a PhD and MSc from Carnegie Mellon, and a BArch from Carleton. He has over 150 publications, including his book Elements of Parametric Design.
In 2009 he chaired Team North, a Canadian entry to the 2009 Solar Decathlon. In 2008 he was awarded the Innovative Research Award from the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture and the Tee Sasada Award from the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia.
email: rw@sfu.ca
Dr. Melanie Tory
Dr. Melanie Tory is an associate professor at the University of Victoria, where she directs the Visual Interaction Design research group.
Her research is in the areas of human-computer interaction, visualization, and computer-supported cooperative work. She designs and evaluates visualization and interaction techniques that allow people to effectively analyze data and make decisions. Her research applies to a wide variety of areas, including the sciences, medicine, and engineering. She is particularly interested in designing visualization techniques based on human perceptual capabilities, as well as designing for multiple co-located users (collaborative visualization).
email: mtory@cs.uvic.ca
website: http://visid.cs.uvic.ca
Dr. Carman Neustadter
Dr. Carman Neustaedter is an Assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Neustaedter specializes in the areas of human-computer interaction, interaction design, domestic computing, and computer-supported collaboration. He is the director of the Connections Lab, an interdisciplinary research group focused on the design and use of technologies for connecting people through technology. Research projects heavily focus on designs for family communication, with recent interests in the use of next-generation video tools to support outdoor leisure activities over distance.
Other past and current projects focus on new forms of mobile payments and commerce, video feedback for sports, video conferencing for workplace collaboration, communication systems for developing countries, and media sharing across time. Dr. Neustaedter has a unique super power that allows him to deeply understand, manipulate, and alter notions of time and distance. He was formerly a Research Scientist at Kodak Research Labs and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester, NY.
email: carman@sfu.ca
website: clab.iat.sfu.ca/carman
Students
Li Wenjing
Li Wenjing is a third-year-undergraduate-student in Education Technology at Ocean University of China, and a visiting MITACS intern at SIAT-SFU. She is interested in family education phenomenon, particularly in the use of technology to draw parents’ attention to their children education. She is part of the Student Research Development Program at her home university, in which she produced a short film about left-behind children’s educational problems. She is currently designing a digital game to teach children about water conservation and sustainable living.
email: wendywk1027@163.com
Salehen Shovon Rahman
Salehan is an undergraduate student at SFU's Software System programme, and uses text files to tell West House what to do.
email: shovonr@sfu.ca
website: shovon.github.com
Abhisekh Patra
Abhisekh is a graduate student in Interactive Arts & Technology at Simon Fraser University pursuing his M.Sc. He joined SFU in Fall 2014. His research interests include affect and color in information visualization. He received his undergraduate degree in computer science from Biju Patnaik University of Technology in 2010, India. He hails from Kolkata, India and enjoys reading, travelling and playing ping pong.
email: apatra@sfu.ca
Supervisor: Dr. Lyn Bartram and Maureen Stone.
Luciano Frizzera
Luciano Frizzera is a PhD student in Interactive Arts + Technology at Simon Fraser University under the supervision of Lyn Bartram. His doctoral project explores the affordances of mobile and social media for civic engagement, especially in the context of smart cities. Luciano’s background spans a diverse range of disciplines and mediums: media studies, graphic design (print and digital), web design, project management, urban studies, digital humanities, and sociology.
Luciano completed his BA in Social Communication at Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil, in 2006. In the same year, he founded a start up company focused in visual communication and interactive digital interfaces. He completed his Master’s degree in Humanities Computing at University of Alberta in 2014, with the thesis “Mobile Media: New Mediations in the Urban Space”.
email: lfrizzer@sfu.ca
website: luciano.fluxo.art.br
Supervisor: Dr. Lyn Bartram.
Dandan Huang
Dandan's research focuses on Information Visualization and Personal Visualization Analytics. The project I am working on is applying information visualization in energy conservation, with the goal at facilitating individuals' reflections on energy consumption.
People usually have poor understandings of their energy consumptive behaviors due to the lack of awareness on how their activity patterns affect energy use. Thus, inferential information can help reveal the relationship between individuals' activities and their energy consumption. We hope our approach can provide individuals actionable knowledge and empower them in decision making.
email: dhuang@uvic.ca
Supervisor: Dr. Melanie Tory and Dr. Lyn Bartram
Vinu Subashini Rajus
Vinu holds a Masters in digital architecture from Anna University, India and a Bachelors of architecture from Madras University, India. She received the "Young CAADRIA" award for the paper she presented on shape optimization using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) at CAADRIA 2009. This research was about using CFD at the initial stages of site planning and placement of buildings, followed by shape optimization of the building to finally achieve a naturally ventilated building. She has over four years of experience in architecture, interior and landscape design. She is interested in computational design, parametric modeling and sustainability.
Her current research is to understand the designer’s perception about occupant behavior for energy consideration, and to determine best practices for visualizing design-choice opportunities.
email: vrajus@sfu.ca
Supervisor: Dr. Rob Woodbury and Dr. Lyn Bartram.
Maryam completed her Bachelor degree from the school of Architecture and Design at American University of Sharjah in UAE, and practiced Architecture for two years before she moved to Canada. She graduated with a MLA degree from UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture with a focus in Sustainability and started working as a LEED Facilitator at BC Sustainable Energy Association for one year prior to joining SFU.
Her current research is focused on studying barriers people perceive in conserving energy within the framework of spaces they interact with. The aim of this research is to "design places as if people mattered", and remove impediments to energy saving.
email: mhaghigh@sfu.ca
Supervisor: Dr. Rob Woodbury and Dr. Lyn Bartram.
Alumni
Jin Fan
email: jfa2@sfu.ca
Minoo Erfani Joorabchi
email: mea18@sfu.ca
Evan Dickinson
Johnny Rodgers
email: jgr3@sfu.ca
website: http://johnny.hcssl.iat.sfu.ca
Supervisor: Dr. Lyn Bartram.
Mengting Sun
Mengting's research interests include computational aesthetics, ambient visualization and informative arts. Mengting has a Bachelor degree in Computing Science both from Simon Fraser University and Zhejiang University, China.
She is currently working on project that focuses on using informative art as visualization for residential energy use feedback. The project contains two parts: a dollhouse interface to simulate power use in the house and an abstract tree display to visualize the realtime energy use feedback.
email: msa93@sfu.ca
Stephen Makonin
Stephen Makonin is a PhD Candidate in Computing Science at Simon Fraser University and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). His research field is primarily in computational sustainability and currently focuses on load disaggregation algorithms for the smart grid, smart homes, and smart meters. He is on professional development leave from BCIT while completes his graduate studies. He is also interested in human-computer interaction (HCI) and how occupants interact with their homes.
email: stephen@makonin.com
website: http://makonin.com