Academic site of Carl Ellis

@article{Meier20111891,
title = "Usability of residential thermostats: Preliminary investigations",
journal = "Building and Environment",
volume = "46",
number = "10",
pages = "1891 - 1898",
year = "2011",
note = "",
issn = "0360-1323",
doi = "10.1016/j.buildenv.2011.03.009",
url = "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360132311000874",
author = "Alan Meier and Cecilia Aragon and Therese Peffer and Daniel Perry and Marco Pritoni",
}
        

Key Points

• There are many misconceptions with regards to thermostats
• Thermostats are treated more like a valve than a switch - A higher set point does not mean the room will heat faster!
• Current thermostats suck

Thermostats suffer from expectations. They are normally expected to carefully regulate temperatures, respond rapidly to changes in preferences or outside conditions, all with infrequent to nil input by occupants.

These expectation are of course, very detached from the current state of deployed thermostats, but nonetheless thermostats are becoming more complex with per day schedules and deep setback points.

Recently there has been an exciting innovation: thermostats are being connected to the internet and extended networks within homes. This, however, is a double edged sword as it is likely to make controls more complex for the user, but that is if control staus completely on the unit/ Potential for automatic control is now high, with models being able to off load calculations to the omnipotent cloud.

However, back to the paper, a number of current thermostats were collected and given to participants for certain tasks, and the participants were also interviewed.

The paper acknowledged that other studies in the literature have noted that occupants "treated thermostats more like a valve than a switch". Confusion with regard to thermostats is not helped by many popular design courses at universities using 'Design a more user-friendly thermostat' as a staple challenge, which if nothing else shows the poor reputation of heating controls.

With regards to this paper, one interesting complain of users was that the thermostats were improperly placed, either on another floor, or in the warmest/coldest room which negatively effected sensor readings and control. Taking this point in hand, and that 81% of the participants did not buy their own thermostat it seems that most were and will be stuck with whatever they inherit.

Another interesting finding is that participants didn't like changing their thermostats for fear of not being able to restore the original settings, and a fraction even kept theirs permanently on!

All of these studies and results point to the need for automatic control. To drive down costs, and stress!