Cozie Apple: An iOS mobile and smartwatch application for environmental quality satisfaction and physiological data collection

People spend the majority of their time indoors and environmental conditions affect their perceptions, performance, health, and well-being. Buildings should, therefore, be designed and operated with the main objective of providing comfortable environments for occupants and meeting their needs. However, in practice, occupants' perceptions and sensations are rarely used to optimize the operation of buildings. This can be partially explained by the fact that collecting feedback from occupants in a reliable and non-intrusive way has always been a difficult and complex task. Not considering occupants' needs may result in a high number of people being dissatisfied with the quality of their indoor environment. We, therefore, developed Cozie an open-source application for the Apple Watch and iPhone. Cozie allows people to complete a short survey and provide real-time feedback about indoor environmental conditions via their smartwatch. This approach reduces the effort it takes for occupants to provide feedback. In addition, Cozie leverages the watch's inbuilt sensors that monitor and log several physiological parameters (e.g., heart rate, activity). The data collected using Cozie has, therefore, the potential of allowing researchers and practitioners to better understand the needs and perceptions of occupants in real time. This may allow them to better design and operate new and existing buildings. Cozie could also help to shift towards an occupant-centric control of buildings, that adjusts indoor environmental conditions in real-time utilizing collected from the occupants.