Digital mirror: a method to shape Smart Citizenship

Abstract The introduction of digital technology into home management is historically connected with home automation: systems are built to serve the user, who is considered satisfied if he does not have to worry about them. This paper will explore a different path whereby the user is highly involved in home management and uses a careful strategy based on highly efficient passive building behavior developed in the context of the Solar Decathlon competition, within the MED in Italy prototype. This strategy relies on a web-based “Dwelling Black Box”, in which all data on house behavior are sent to and saved on a database, building a timeline of houseliving aimed at raising the inhabitants’ awareness and consequences of their actions. The interface was developed with two focuses in particular: a 3D web interface, based on WebGL open standard, and integration into a content management framework, allowing multiple houses to be investigated as nodes of a social network of homes, so that behavior and performance data can be compared and exchanged. The whole is aimed at returning to the contemporary context the awareness and know-how of our grandmothers, who knew very well how to operate their homes: from “domotics” to “grandmothics”.