The nature of working on projects at the forefront of innovations in tech means we often team up with researchers and academics, as well as industry partners. Our relationship with Imperial College London has developed over the years, and recently we were delighted to support a team of students with a live brief to help them develop a project with real-world implications. Our IoT Project Manager, Sam Grounds supervised the group and explains more.
Sam and the Imperial student team
As part of DG Cities’ ongoing relationship with Imperial College London, I supervised a group of Electrical and Electronic Engineering students for their end of year summer project. The purpose of these partnerships is to give the students real-life case studies to work and experiment with, as well as embellishing existing DG Cities projects with outside perspectives and expertise.
The group chose to work on one of our IoT projects, which is aimed at using technology to improve people’s understanding of energy usage in their home. We gave the students an overview and a set of research questions to answer, keeping them broad to encourage a creative approach. Their work was fantastic, and gave our DG Cities team some interesting new insights.
One of their most useful suggestions was to categorise users based on their assumed ‘energy behaviours’, ranging from ‘tech savvy’ to ‘indifferent’. One of the challenges within this project can be identifying the most effective messaging to use to communicate with people with different levels of motivation. By identifying these characteristics early on, it would be possible to communicate with different residents in ways that suit them best, driving greater levels of engagement and ensuring users can get the most out of the technology. The students developed a methodology to identify these personalities through surveys and data analysis, which could inform engagement strategies for future projects.
At DG Cities, we have a wide variety of interests and expertise across our team, and staff are always encouraged and able to make meaningful contributions to our work. By extending this line of thinking to academic institutions, we are able to not only extend our network, but we are exposed to increasingly fresh and innovative ideas.
Working with the students on this project was such a valuable process for me to be a part of as a project manager. Running a project, it’s all too easy to get bogged down in problem-solving and the challenges faced along the way. Introducing the project to a new set of people allowed me to reflect on where we were to date, and identify not only the successes, but to gain a new perspective on the challenges and encourage learning. It benefits both parties; for students entering the final stages of their university education, the prospect of joining the world of work can be daunting, but partnerships such as these provide valuable insights into real life projects, and allow them to contribute meaningfully to outcomes. I’m excited to see where our future collaborations take us!
Here's what they had to say about the project and our collaboration…
Tanya Chopra
When initially presented with the various project briefs, I was immediately drawn to the “Nudging Energy Trial” proposed by DG Cities, due to my interest in the machine learning and energy sectors, alongside the potential positive impacts the project could help have on the community. “Reduce your energy usage” is something we always hear; however, this project has provided an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of energy usage trends and general misconceptions. I always thought I made an effort to reduce my usage, however having undertaken this project it has made me more conscious of various factors that can affect our usage levels.
Due to us each having varying background experience, we were able to support one another effectively and allocate roles between us to help achieve the best results. In our initial group meeting, we talked about our skill sets and interests, and from there we assigned roles and divided into subgroups. This helped us in playing to each other’s strengths, and to ensure everyone was content with the roles they had been allocated to.
One of the challenges I did not initially expect to face was how complex it can be trying to categorise users into distinct groups based on their energy usage levels, as there are often several factors that come into play, which result in a change in behaviour between different times of day.
Miguel Bragança
At first, the limitless aspect of our problem seemed a bit intimidating. But as we navigated through it, it turned into an unexpected blessing. It gave us the freedom to tweak and adjust our project's direction. It empowered us to venture down paths that we felt were both meaningful and fascinating.
We always had this clear idea to create a product that combined qualitative data - from surveys - with quantitative information powered by Machine Learning. But, we hadn't quite expected the level of iteration and the numerous changes in direction we'd make throughout the project. Progress wasn't a straight line; there were times when some of our work didn't find its way into the final product at all.
But here's the thing - facing and overcoming these challenges played a huge role in our overall satisfaction with the final product. It was the journey, with all its ups and downs, that made the destination truly worthwhile.
Derek Ang
Balazs and Sam gave us lots of freedom to do what we wanted, so the project started off as an open problem. Eager to define the objectives and start work quickly, I stepped up as project lead. I was lucky to have talented and supportive teammates for a randomly assigned team. We concluded that we would require roles in data modelling, public outreach, and design. The team filled up the roles based on their interests and delivered exceptional results.
It was challenging to package our solution to meet the academic expectations laid out by our supervisor. Throughout the project, we encountered many real-life obstacles, such as uncertainty and incomplete data. To progress, we had to rely on educated guesses and assumptions, which presented difficulties in documenting and explaining our decisions.
We were able to strike a balance between the academic and DG Cities’ expectations by maintaining clear communication with both parties throughout the project. It was very useful to hear Balazs and Sam’s perspectives during our weekly meetings. They guided us in the right direction and provided lots of on-the-ground context for our solution. They also offered us the wonderful opportunity to present our project to a wider audience, from whom we received valuable feedback.
Yuhe Zhang
From the first time reading the project title of ‘Nudging Energy Trial’, I immediately sensed its widespread social relevance as energy topics always capture public interest. To perform data analysis in this project, we were not only applying cutting-edge machine learning algorithms on ideal datasets but also thinking ourselves as members of the community, empathizing with residents, and contemplating feasible ways to collectively build a sustainable living environment. The diversity within our team has revealed countless possibilities to me. In addition to the complementary strengths of our team members, we are receptive to viewpoints presented by the DG Cities team from a corporate perspective. The continuous refinement of our project's concept is also attributed to our positive communication between both parties. As we actively engaged in project research and conducted in-depth investigations, we consistently encountered challenges and overcame difficulties, further solidifying my belief that we can leverage our academic knowledge to provide practical solutions for societal issues.
Patrica Acha Zemora
Learning about the challenges of working with residents drastically changed my view on community engagement. The diversity and complexity of community perspectives, along with varying participation levels and the difficulty in reaching residents, added layers of complexity I hadn't initially anticipated. Initially, I assumed it was a straightforward process of seeking feedback and analysing responses. However, gathering useful data was much more difficult than I anticipated!
This experience reshaped our approach. We realised the need to craft concise yet comprehensive survey questions that would keep participants engaged without overwhelming them. We had to strike a balance - we wanted to gather substantial data to craft well-informed solutions, but we also had to respect the time and energy of our respondents. Overly lengthy and open-ended surveys often deterred them from participating.
Upon gathering and analysing the data, we managed to broadly divide the population into different segments. It was fascinating to see our data team use this information in their approach to create tailored solutions!
Elodie Delort
Since the project deliverables required a variety of skills in very different domains, it was nice to be able to assign each of our responsibilities based on our individual skills and interests. As I personally do not have much knowledge in Machine Learning or AI, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to contribute with the more creative side through the leaflet and poster. The entire project was really helpful in giving us insight on how real-world company projects would work with the combination of many people from different backgrounds and interests. We were able to all show off our personal skills on the tasks that we each worked on whilst simultaneously learning about how other people approach the same type of tasks.
