A friend of mine, Dr Elke Weber of Columbia University, introduced me to the term “affordance” a couple of years ago. It was a great to learn a word that filled a void in my vocabulary. Until then, I had searched for a term to describe a physical attribute that allowed or encouraged a certain behavior. In my world of energy management there is a lot of discussion about human behavior and also about sustainable design. But I haven’t found that much about the link between these two. Affordances are that link. Wikipedia defines an affordance as “the possibility of an action on an object or environment.” That strikes me as a sort of zen idea. It’s not just the action (perhaps what behavioralists focus on) or the object (perhaps what the engineer focuses on)- it’s the possibility of an action on an object.
We searched for the light switches but couldn’t find them. I returned to the Public Works office and found the electrical drawings. I came back and we unlocked a closet where they were storing Christmas decorations. It was actually an electrical room with the corridor circuit breakers. Looking closely, we found some old stickers directing the building occupants to turn the lights on at 1800 , when it gets dark, and off at 0645, when the soldiers went to class. Unfortunately, nobody knew about these circuit breakers so the lights had been on for years, possibly decades. Now it could be argued that the affordance did exist. But I don’t think that anyone would argue it was very effective.
We installed some motion sensors to keep all but the emergency lights off when the building was unoccupied and at night.
energymanagementology 