Teaching Energy Reduction in Interface Design by Heuristic Evaluation

In this paper, we present a practical teaching activity aimed for students in human-computer interaction to identify problems related to energy usage in interface design. A set of nine heuristics have been elicited from literature, and tested in a study with 49 students. The study shows that the novice evaluators with low effort could effectively surface problems related to energy usage, but also highlight a tension between user experience and energy saving. The contribution of this paper is a lightweight and practical teaching activity for educating future interface designers on how to minimize energy consumption.