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01 | Unnoticeable Cause

Environmental degradation is hard to observe directly and immediately. This uncertain future consequence of the environment creates little personal concern for water as a scarce resource and lowers people’s intention to care about the water conservation.

Solution  |  Personal relevance to problem

These feedback strategies focus on the outcomes of the specific activities to clarify to individuals that they can influence them. When individuals know how to achieve the modifications, they feel more strongly responsible for the problem and are more willing to effect change.

Design  |  Consume water in bathroom

The virtual bathroom, including a toilet, shower, and faucet, that was built in the game. In the game, participants were required to exhaust the water in the virtual bathroom for flushing the toilet and taking a shower, after which they received feedback on their water consumption. The design was intended to present a clear connection between specific habitual activities and water consumption to increase the participants’ awareness of how their customary behaviors are related to environmental problems.

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02 | Abstract Consumption

The use of the natural resources is abstract. This abstraction leads to cognitive complexity, which causes people commonly to underestimate the actual amount of resource consumption.

Solution  |  Vivid information of effect

In resource conservation policies, the vivid effect, or solid abstract information, can significantly accelerate individual understanding of the actual consumption and make messages more persuasive. Depicting the energy usage in terms of the amount of deforestation or displaying water usage over a year as a number of swimming pools renders the consumption based on factual knowledge more salient.

Design  |  Represent consumption & Deplete physical strength

To make the amount of daily water use more concrete, we utilized 600-milliliter bottles and the consumption of physical energy to represent feedback on water consumption. In the game, a central water reservoir stored the water resource, and numerous virtual bathrooms were located in the oasis. The water could be used after being drawn to a water-storage tank in the virtual bathrooms.

To build a water scarcity environment, water could be drawn if the assistant in the game, the other player, repeated the physical motion of pumping to fill the water-storage tank. Players in one of the bathrooms were allowed one minute to use a 600-milliliter bottle repeatedly to transfer water from a water storage tank to specific water tanks for flushing the toilet and taking a one-minute shower. After the tasks, the actual water consumption of each activity was visualized as multiple 600-milliliter bottles.

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03 | Temporal Distance

The daily consumption of water and energy is unnoticeable. With the insulation of modern people from the environment, individuals cannot easily perceive the excessive resource usage of their personal habitual behaviors.

Solution  |  Immediacy of the consequence

Immediacy is an attribute of visualization that makes longer-term consequences seem nearer-term through accelerating time. This approach can provide information about the cumulative negative impact on the environment of activities such as water or energy over consumption as conspicuous signals that individuals rarely observe directly or immediately.

Design  |  Exaggerated feedback

The exaggerated feedback was intended to convey the concept that an individual may unconsciously cause negative consequences, which is hard to be aware of while using water in daily life. Two types of exaggerated feedback were considered：1. Negative impact on environment feedback：Shrinking of the oasis due to the drop in the water level of the water reservoir. 2. Negative impact on consumption：The rapid consumption and exaggerated drop in the water level.

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