Design Studio 2.4

Continuing with the second terms research and interventions. This intervention focussed on better understanding others perspective on our research and interests.

The idea behind this intervention was to continue to design with people outside of the two of us and better understand how others might view certain questions we have been contemplating. To do this we decided to do two different things. First we wanted to hold a collaborative design session with other MDEF students to better understand how people from other fields might view our problem. Next, we felt that we should interview people outside our university environment to better understand what non-designers might see as potential areas of interest. These interviews have yet to take place but we are planning to do them in the coming weeks.

The Collaborative Design Session

For this session Oliver and I really felt that we should try and ask questions we felt would be interesting to hear new perspectives on. With this in mind we brainstormed about what key issues were and how we could potentially frame them to gain valuable information from this session. In the end we decided on 5 questions to ask. These were based around 3 main themes we are interested in exploring.

1. AI and its place in the home
2. Designing for behavioral change
3. Energy and consumption

Mobirise Website Builder

I feel that the main learnings from this collaborative design session were that the people that participated felt there should be a step for step change. Rushing the process could cause a negative backlash on the idea and we should try and avoid that. Next to this it was also noted a few times that education could be a potential avenue for us to look into. Starting young could create a better understanding in the future. Below you find the fully filled out posters and also the main conclusions drawn per question. 

Interviewing Others

While the interviews have yet to take place I have been wondering what the main goal would be of these interviews and what would be the core of these one on one sessions be. I think if I look at our project so far we have had contact with various people but all relatively informal and as we move forward it is key to create a space in which people feel free to share their ideas and views even if they are different then our own. In these interviews I want to really open the space for these non designers to share their ideas and ways they see the future.

Reflecting and Looking the Future

As I am writing this reflection term 2 has come to a close and there is a lot of things to reflect on. Not only in particular this intervention but also the process Oliver and I have been on these past months.

In particular to this intervention I feel that we have started taking a step to create a community of practice but this is still very much within the first rings of closeness to ourselves. What we are doing now is valuable to open our eyes to the possibilities of designing in a different way.

It would be interesting in the future to really reach out to other communities that might have opposite views of us or are on the extreme end of the spectrum we are focussing on. I would be interested in talking to people who live of the grid and seeing what they have to say how people use energy and resources. While we don’t feel the need to shift everyone to an off the grid lifestyle I do feel hearing their perspective could be highly beneficial to seeing if their reasonings and motivations could be used in the future. 

Another group I would be interested in reaching out to are people that have contracts with energy firms that are like a corporative. In which they share energy with their neighbors. This is a thing that has been growing in the past years but I do not know much about yet. It would be interesting to better understand how this could work as imagine a future in which one has solar panels and can send the extra energy they don’t need to their neighbors. Or what would happen if all main energy providers shift to such a way of distribution. In the next term I feel that focus will be on meeting and talking to more groups about their views and designing with them to shift our energy research to new and innovative places

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