Experience Elements of User Feedback for Air Conditioning Systems in Office Buildings Based on Context Theory

Abstract

The energy-efficient operation of air conditioning systems in office buildings plays a crucial role in the creation of sustainable built environment as well as the low-carbon development in the building sector. To achieve the goal of energy conservation without comfort penalty, it is desirable that relevant information from system users can be accurately collected through the user feedback method, thereby improving the system’s operation performance. The successful usage of this method is heavily dependent on system users’ experience which allows users to actively provide feedback. However, so far very few studies have given sufficient consideration to the user feedback experience of air conditioning systems in office buildings. Consequently, such experience is still poorly understood, and this hinders designers from developing effective strategies for designing corresponding tools with the goal of improving user feedback experience. To address this issue, this paper first analyzes the current status and characteristics of user feedback for air conditioning systems in office buildings. Then, the context theory is employed to analyze and define the experience elements of user feedback from the perspectives of user, environment, task, and product contexts. Based on the above analysis, the mutual influences between these experience elements are examined, and typical design strategies for the user feedback are further developed. Our future work will focus on validating the effectiveness of these experience elements and design strategies in improving user feedback experience by conducting design practices and tests.

Keywords: User feedback, User experience, Design, Air conditioning system, Context theory

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005280