The 'Greeny Energy Meter' was the result of a graduation project completed by Dennis Menheere, of Delft University, in conjunction with the non-profit environmental organization Milieu Centraal.

Milieu Centraal had initiated the 'meten is weten' (to measure is to know) campaign which involved the use of a simple energy meter over the course of a three week period. Although the study resulted in a reported 7% saving on participants electricity bills on average, "Milieu Central received a number of reactions from participants in the campaign that they considered the energy meter too complicated" [1].

Using user centred design techniques such as home visits, personas, scenarios, use cases, paper prototyping, interface concept simulation in PowerPoint, a group-wise cognitive walkthrough, heuristic analysis and a lab usability study, Menheere redesigned and significant improvements to the energy meter used during Milieu Central's original campaign.

The new user interface "guides the user step by step through the measuring process". It can be "set to multiple languages (allowing for the product to be used throughout Europe). In this new meter, the part of the meter that has to be plugged into the socket has been separated from the body of the device. This makes the Greeny suitable for measurements on a larger number of devices, and it's easier to read the display while measuring.

Finally Menheere added LEDs to the product, which allows the user to - even from a distance - get a general impression of the energy usage. The more energy the device that is attached consumes, the more LEDs will light up" [1]. The use of LEDs keeps the environmental load of this design feature fairly low as LEDs consume only small amounts of energy.