We believe that self-reporting is a limiting factor in the original vision of StepGreen.org, and this component of our research has begun to explore alternatives. For example, we showed that financial data can be used to extract footprint information [1], and in collaboration with researchers at Intel and University of Washington, we used a mobile device to track and visualize green transportation behavior in the Ubigreen project [2].

More details on Ubigreen and a video are available at http://dub.washington.edu/projects/ubigreen and published at CHI 2009 [1]. We are currently in the process of implementing an updated version of Ubigreen which can connect to the Stepgreen.org website and can track more than just transportation behaviors.

[1] J. Schwartz, J. Mankoff, H. Scott Matthews. Reflections of everyday activity in spending data. In Proceedings of CHI 2009.  (Note). (pdf)

[2] J. Froehlich, T. Dillahunt, P. Klasnja, J. Mankoff, S. Consolvo, B. Harrison, J. A. Landay, UbiGreen: Investigating a Mobile Tool for Tracking and Supporting Green Transportation Habits. In Proceedings of CHI 2009. (Full paper) (pdf)