Spain: different audiences, same purpose

Most of eTEACHER’s demo sites are located in the west part of Spain. These buildings vary greatly in terms of their use as they include offices, schools, healthcare centres and residential blocks as shown by the list below:

• 2 schools – The State Secondary School “Torrente Ballester” and the Nursery School “Arco Iris”, both in Mijadas
• 1 office building – the OAR (Organismo Autónomo de Recaudación – Autonomous Collection Agency) which is an autonomous non-profit administrative body dependent on the County Council, in Badajoz
• 1 residential building – located in Av. Godofredo Ortega y Muñoz, in Badajoz
• 2 health care centres – the one of Villafranca de los Barros and the health care centre of Guareña.

Last June, users from each building attended its own dedicated workshop with the aim of understanding how the end-users handle IT today and in the future. The audience was composed of students, teachers, technicians, facility managers, doctors and nurses, and home tenants. Despite having wide audience diversity and having completely different final outputs, the activities were carried out smoothly as common points were tackled.

All attendees were keen in learning more about the project and be involved in it. They actively participated in the workshops’ activities and gave suggestions as to how the eTEACHER tool can be improved. Since eTEACHER is supposed to empower end-users and to improve their energy behaviour, understanding their perspectives, interests and preferences is one of the most essential parts of the whole project. Letting end-users have the possibility in being part of eTEACHER’s design process and respond about their buildings’ conditions allow them to be an important element in eTEACHER’s path of changing people’s behaviour towards energy consumption.