SUSTAINABILITY INVENTION AND ENERGY DEMAND REDUCTION: CO-DESIGNING COMMUNITIES AND PRACTICE
Lead Research Organisation:
Goldsmiths University of London
Department Name: Sociology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Publications
Born, G
(2016)
Studio Studies: Operations, topologies and displacements
Boucher Andy
(2018)
Energy Babble
Farías, I.
(2016)
Studio Studies: Operations, topologies and displacements
Farías, I.
(2016)
Studio Studies: Operations, topologies and displacements
Gabrys J
(2014)
A Cosmopolitics of Energy: Diverging Materialities and Hesitating Practices
in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
Gaver W
(2015)
Energy Babble
Michael M
(2018)
Aesthetics and Affect: Engaging Energy Communities
in Science as Culture
Michael M
(2012)
De-Signing the Object of Sociology: Toward an 'Idiotic' Methodology
in The Sociological Review
Michael, M.
(2013)
The Idiot
in Informática na Educação: Teoria e Prática
Mike Michael (Author)
(2011)
On the many hybridities of STS
| Title | A Sense Of Energy - Multimodal Encounters With Energy Communities: Energy Babble |
| Description | The Energy Babble has been exhibited along with other project outputs from the Energy and Communities programme in exhibitions organised by Karen Henwood and Bill Gaver with support from the EPSRC. These exhibitions, titled 'A Sense Of Energy - Multimodal Encounters With Energy Communities' have been staged twice to date: • 26 - 28 June, The White Building, Hackney Wick, London • 30 September - 2 October, The Senedd, Cardiff, Wales |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | These exhibitions reached a large and diverse audience, ranging from school children to government policy makers. We plan to publish an account of this in due course. |
| URL | http://www.esrc.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/32021/a-sense-of-energy.aspx |
| Title | Energy Babble |
| Description | The Energy Babble is a kind of automated talk-radio that is obsessed with energy and the environment. A local server gathers content from a variety of online sources, including Twitter™ feeds from the communities, from governmental departments, and from the National Grid, and converts text to synthesised speech, interspersed with a variety of jingles and sound effects. The audio is sent via Internet to multiple devices situated in a variety of homes and public spaces used by research participants. These devices consist of two custom blown-glass components set on top of an injection-moulded base. The base houses the device's electronic components, including a Raspberry PI microcomputer, various actuators, and a compact loudspeaker. The central glass piece serves to amplify the output of the speaker located beneath it-glass's acoustic properties make it optimal for this function-while second glass piece supports it and holds a microphone attached to the base by a coiled cable. The microphone is used to record comments to be sent back to the server, where they are converted to text and resynthesised for later broadcast. A prominent yellow knob rotates to control volume; if turned beyond its lowest setting it plays a recorded description of the system and its operation, using the same synthesised voices as the rest of the system. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | The Energy Babbles were deployed for over 6 months to five 'energy communities' around the UK. Here they served to bring new energy-related information into the communities and to allow communications across communities. They also served significantly to fuel conversations with the research team about the particularities of the communities activities and struggles, and their engagement with issues including but not limited to the environment. The Energy Babble has been exhibited in exhibitions organised by Karen Henwood and Bill Gaver with support from the EPSRC. These exhibitions, titled 'A Sense Of Energy - Multimodal Encounters With Energy Communities' have been staged twice to date: o 26 - 28 June, The White Building, Hackney Wick, London o 30 September - 2 October, The Senedd, Cardiff, Wales These exhibitions reached a large and diverse audience, ranging from school children to government policy makers. We plan to publish an account of this in due course. The Energy Babble was also included in the Feral Experimental exhibition, 18 July - 30 August, 2014 (Katherine Moline, curator) at the UNSW Galleries in Sydney, Australia. So far this has resulted in two press reviews: o Jess Scully, 'Radio interview: Katherine Moline - Feral Experimental at UNSW Art & Design', So Hot Right Now, 2SER 107.3, 26 July 2014. o Harry Azidis, 'Going Feral', Broadsheet Sydney, 8th August 2014. There is interest in touring this exhibition both to Carnegie Mellon and to RMIT, Melbourne. In addition, a book of edited essays based on the exhibition (and including a chapter on the Babble) is planned as well. |
| URL | http://www.niea.unsw.edu.au/events/exhibition-feral-experimental |
| Title | Experimental Practice: Provocations In and Out of Design |
| Description | The Energy Babble featured in the exhibition "Experimental Practice: Provocations In and Out of Design" hosted by RMIT University, Melbourne, 11 May 2015 - 29 May 2015. See the catalogue at: (part 1) http://designhub.rmit.edu.au/docs/ep-catalogue-outer.pdf (part 2) http://designhub.rmit.edu.au/docs/ep-catalogue-inner.pdf |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | This was the second iteration of the Feral Design exhibition curated by Katherine Moline. That exhibition as successful enough that it has formed the basis of a travelling exhibition that later went to Brisbane and is under negotiation for show in the US. |
| URL | http://designhub.rmit.edu.au/exhibitions-programs/experimental-practice-provocations-in-and-out-of-d... |
| Title | Experimental Thinking / Design Practices |
| Description | The Energy Babble was exhibited in the "Experimental Thinking / Design Practices" exhibition, Griffith University Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, 18 September - 07 November 2015. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | This exhibition is the the third in a series of exhibitions curated by Katherine Moline, and negotiations are underway for the exhibition to travel to the US. All the exhibitions have had significant online and press attention and have been well reviewed, with their success prompting new venues to ask for new versions to be staged. |
| URL | https://www.griffith.edu.au/visual-creative-arts/griffith-artworks/exhibition-program/2015-exhibitio... |
| Title | Feral Experimental exhibition |
| Description | Feral Experimental was an exhibition accompanied by a series of seminars and workshops, staged at the National Institute for Experimental Arts in Sydney Australia from 18 July - 30 August 2014. The Energy Babble was chosen for display in the exhibition by the curator, Katherine Moline. From the website (http://www.niea.unsw.edu.au/events/exhibition-feral-experimental; accessed 14 Nov. 2014): "Bringing together leading international practitioners and researchers Feral Experimental aims to test the limits of possibility by exploring the boundaries and intersections of experimental practice in design thinking, speculative design, participatory and co-design. Feral Experimental sets out to explore state-of-the-art strategies for negotiating significant contemporary challenges from preparations for extreme wildfire, to energy conservation to the preservation of cultural heritage. Feral Experimental incorporates an exhibition, a symposium, workshops and a series of public lectures. The program will highlight real world applications and the impact of design methods that are currently being developed in universities and research centres. Experimental approaches to design thinking are engaged with user experiences via cultural probes and tangible interactions that are informed by design ethnography, design anthropology, and new combinations of technology. These approaches extend data collection methods that combine sensors, cameras, and GPS tracking to measure the affect of cycling, and technologies that emulate seeing through another's eyes." |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | The exhibition was very well attended by a mixture of academics, practitioners and press from Design and related disciplines. • Jess Scully, 'Radio interview: Katherine Moline - Feral Experimental at UNSW Art & Design', So Hot Right Now, 2SER 107.3, 26 July 2014. • Harry Azidis, 'Going Feral', Broadsheet Sydney, 8th August 2014. There is interest in touring this exhibition both to Carnegie Mellon and to RMIT, Melbourne. A book of edited essays based on the exhibition (and including a chapter on the Babble) is planned as well. |
| URL | http://www.niea.unsw.edu.au/events/exhibition-feral-experimental |
| Description | Our findings come from a practice-based approach in which we worked with 6 - 8 'energy communities' spread across the UK. In addition to visiting the communities, we hosted an 'engagement workshop' and provided Cultural Probe kits for community members to work with at home. We developed several design workbooks and focused on the concept of an 'Energy Babble', developing this to batch-produce a set of highly-finished research devices. The Energy Babble is an audio device using synthesised speech to read out energy-related content algorithmically scraped from the web, and also inputs made by the devices' users. Twenty eight Babbles were distributed to the communities for a period of about six months, and their engagements studied through a combination of ethnographic interviews and documentary film. Based on this work, our findings are: 1. Energy communities are heterogeneous and struggle with policy. Energy 'communities' are by no means coextensive with their geographical settings. Typically involving small numbers of committed members who see themselves as practitioners, innovators and transition advocates, they form and reform in response to policy and funding changes, seek to enrol the communities of their villages or towns or cities, and agonise over how they will involve more people in their plans. Some were extremely well organised and funded, while others were very ad hoc and quiet. Related to this, Energy communities have a very diverse set of orientations, interests and activities with regards to sustainable energy generation and demand. Although not entirely co-extensive with their geographical setting, the Energy Communities are, in part, shaped by the socio-cultural specificities of their geographical milieu. The orientations that the local communities take are typically inflected with particular engagements with on-the-ground concerns and practices such as energy literacy, agricultural uses, energy poverty, and so on. This makes forming them into larger communities or sharing knowledge and best practice problematic. A strong message from the communities was that they see Government policies as very difficult to work with. There were several reasons for this, including their constant change and the perception that they were made overly complicated to discourage excessive participation. 2. A mixed Design- and Sociology-led methodology supported engagement with the energy communities. Designs like the Babble can play a dual role in the communities. On the one hand, the system provided information and allowed some communication amongst participants. More importantly, it played an active role in conversations between participants and researchers, helping to reveal a great deal of information about their activities, experiences and concerns. Similarly, design-led methods like those used in the engagement workshop and the Cultural Probes appear effective in shaping a positive, collaborative relationship with community participants who are busy, and somewhat jaded from a great deal of traditional social scientific scrutiny. New methods were also developed and trialled as part of the project. This included the design and deployment of software research robots on Twitter - building on developments in Digital Sociology - and a Descripting workshop, where the assumptions designed into existing energy monitoring technologies was held up against actual use. 3. The internet is an emerging ecology of energy-demand reduction that can be used in design. The Internet is a repository for a vast range of content relevant to energy conservation and production, including information about the national grid, government policy, available technologies and community practices. Social media may be a valuable source of energy-related information. Algorithmic web scraping is an effective way to find and gather this information, however filtering and organising it to align with communities' activities is a significant challenge. The Internet is also a setting for the emergence of new energy-related practices and actors, such as the bots mentioned earlier. The Internet, including social media, can therefore be understood as a novel and emerging ecology of energy-demand reduction not reducible to an information repository or communication medium. Product design allows technologies to be embodied appropriately in order to make the most of the concrete features of the communities and groups described above. For example, deploying a design in a school drives new forms of use by groups engaged in demand reduction, fieldwork and other activities who can respond to these emerging practices. |
| Exploitation Route | 1. Academic communities - the project provides methodological examples ranging from new ways to engage participants to the use of devices to explore communities that can be used and extended by researchers and practitioners in HCI and Sociology concerned with environmental and other issues. 2. The energy communities - our work has supplemented awareness of differences across communities, and problems of sharing 'best practice' across communities, in ways we expect to have lasting impact on their relationships. We are seeking to maximise this by post-project engagement with, e.g., the exhibitions we have staged. 3. Energy Policy community - our work will raise awareness of the negative impacts of overcomplicated, inconsistent and variable policy initiatives. The exhibitions and associated lectures and workshops are the primary mechanism for achieving this impact (note that the Wales instance of the 'Sense of Energy' exhbition was held in the Senedd where various policy makers encountered the displays and attended the opening symposia). 4. Wider public - our work will have public impact by demonstrating the complexity of issues around 'energy demand reduction' (eg the complex status of energy-related 'information'; the complexities of relations between 'energy communities'). Once again, the exhibitions have proven valuable in reaching a broader public, including school children, university students, workers in sustainability related fields and other passersby. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Energy Environment |
| URL | http://www.ecdc.ac.uk |
| Description | Our impact strategy for this project centres on exhibitions, presentations and publications from the project, which have been ongoing since its completion. Most recently the Energy Babble has been included in an Australian exhibition called - Experimental Practice: Provocations In and Out of Design at Design Hub, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, 11-30 May 2015. This extends its antipodean presence from its original inclusion in the Feral Experimental exhibition, 18 July - 30 August, 2014 at the UNSW Galleries in Sydney, Australia, which resulted in two press reviews: • Jess Scully, 'Radio interview: Katherine Moline - Feral Experimental at UNSW Art & Design', So Hot Right Now, 2SER 107.3, 26 July 2014. • Harry Azidis, 'Going Feral', Broadsheet Sydney, 8th August 2014. There is interest in touring this exhibition both to Carnegie Mellon and to RMIT, Melbourne. In addition, a book of edited essays based on the exhibition (and including a chapter on the Babble) is planned as well. In the UK, Energy Babble, along with associated research materials and findings, has been exhibited in exhibitions organised by Karen Henwood and Bill Gaver with support from the EPSRC. These exhibitions, titled 'A Sense Of Energy - Multimodal Encounters With Energy Communities' have been staged twice: • 26 - 28 June, The White Building, Hackney Wick, London • 30 September - 2 October, The Senedd, Cardiff, Wales These exhibitions reached a large and diverse audience, ranging from school children to government policy makers. We are also actively publishing project results to audiences from several disciplines, most notably Human Computer Interaction, Sociology and Science and Technology Studies. Participants in HCI, particularly, include a significant proportion of industry researchers and practitioners. Finally, project members have discussed the project in numerous lectures internationally. Again, because of the nature of the discipline these talks attract mixed academic and non-academic audiences: Gaver, W. Provocation Panel - Question Time. Keynote panel, Research Through Design conference, Cambridge, UK, 25 - 27 March, 2015. Gaver, W. Research through Design. Keynote address to PhD By Design, Goldsmiths, University of London, November 6 - 7, 2014. Gaver, W. Three Projects about the Environment. Invited lecture, National Institute for Experimental Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, July 24, 2014. Gaver, W. Three Projects about the Environment. Invited lecture, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, July 21, 2014. Gaver, W. Challenging Conversations. Invited lecture, University of Sydney, 17 July 2014. Kerridge, T. Energy Babble, Travelling Seminars Series of Publics then, now and beyond Network, Open University, 2013. Kerridge, T. Energy Babble, SPRU - Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex, 2013. Kerridge, T., Ovalle, L., Plummer-Fernandez, M., Gabrys, J., Gaver, W., Michael, M., et al. (2012). Energy Babble - design interventions for energy reduction communities. Paper presented at Design and Cosmopolitics: From Intervention to Emergence in Participation and Sustainability track (also organized by project members). Biennial Conference of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) 2012. October 17th -20th, 2012, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark Held Jointly With The Society For Social Studies Of Science (4s). Ovalle, L. Keynote: Energy Babble, Designing a research device , Symposium Design Research, Design Academy Eindhoven, May 13, 2015. Wilkie, A. 2014, Speculative method and Twitter: Bots, energy and three conceptual characters (co-authors Mike Michael & Matthew Plummer-Fernandez). Paper presented at the conference: Inventing the Social: Celebrating 10 years of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process, Goldsmiths University of London. Wilkie, A. April 25th 2014. Speculative Method and Twitter: Bots, Energy and Three Conceptual Characters (co-authors Mike Michael & Matthew Plummer-Fernandez). Paper Presented at the Panel 'Speculation in Social Science: Novel Methods for Re-Inventing Problems, British Sociological Association Annual Conference. There are several 'user' communities for this work: 1. The energy communities - our work has supplemented awareness of differences across communities, and problems of sharing 'best practice' across communities, in ways we expect to have lasting impact on their relationships. We are seeking to maximise this by post-project engagement with, e.g., the exhibitions we have staged. 2. Energy Policy community - we believe our work will raise awareness of the negative impacts of overcomplicated, inconsistent and variable policy initiatives. The exhibitions and associated lectures and workshops are the primary mechanism for achieving this impact. For instance, in Wales the 'Sense of Energy' exhbition was held in the Senedd where various policy makers encountered the displays and attended the opening symposia. We also participated in the energy exhibition at the Parliament organised by the ESRC and AHRC where we were able to discuss this research briefly with policymakers. 3. Wider public - our work has had public impact by demonstrating the complexity of issues around 'energy demand reduction' (eg the complex status of energy-related 'information'; the complexities of relations between 'energy communities'). Once again, the exhibitions have proven valuable in reaching a broader public, including school children, university students, workers in sustainability related fields, as well as general passersby. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2014 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Electronics,Energy,Environment |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal |
| Description | ESRC Strategic Investment fund: Developing capacity in multimodal research, community engagement and energy demand reduction |
| Amount | £283,827 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | ES/I007067/1 |
| Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2013 |
| End | 06/2014 |
| Description | A sense of energy |
| Organisation | Cardiff University |
| Department | School of Social Sciences |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Our team worked with Karen Henwood's team at Cardiff University to design and stage a travelling exhibition called "Sense of Energy: Multimodal Encounters with Energy Communities". The partnership secured funding from the ESRC for this purpose. The exhibition has appeared twice: - The White Building, London, 26 - 28 June 2014 - The Welsh Assembly, Cardiff, 30 September - 2 October 2014. Each exhibition was accompanied by a variety of symposia and related events drawing audiences of around 100 - 300 people. These were a mixture of local residents, concerned citizens, researchers and (in the Cardiff case) policy makers. Our team took responsibility for the overall exhibition design as well as the design and production of a catalog for the show. In addition, we conducted a 'Data Walking Tour' as part of the London exhibition in which participants -- reflecting the demographics above -- walked along a preplanned route with a set of geographically-linked 'big data' about the areas they were in. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Cardiff team took responsibility for coordinating other exhibitors. They also hired an artist/designer (Rachel Murphy) to produce interpretative designs to accompany individual exhibits, and coordinated most of the workshop activities. |
| Impact | A film was produced about the exhibition: http://energybiographies.org/our-work/exhibition-2/#sthash.cLUJOE1r.dpuf |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | OnSupply |
| Organisation | Lancaster University |
| Department | School of Computing and Communications |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Based on the SUSTAINABILITY INVENTION AND ENERGY DEMAND REDUCTION project, we collaborated with Adrian Friday's group at the Lancaster Computing Department to put in a bid for funding to the Catalyst project at Lancaster. We undertook direct research on the Isle of Tiree in Scotland, running a cultural probe study and developing a series of design proposals investigating the energy supply situation on the island. These were presented at an exhibition on the island for discussion and feedback. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Lancaster group coordinated the project and mediated the collaboration with the Tiree Trust. They also undertook primary research including design efforts and workshops with local residents. |
| Impact | A paper on our work in the project is in preparation. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Title | Energy Babble |
| Description | Energy Babbles are bespoke products that broadcast energy-related audio streams generated by an in-house system (described later) and that allow users to enter their own spoken comments in return. The most visible manifestation of the Energy Babble are the 35 devices that we distributed to participants. These comprise a combination of two custom blown-glass components set on top of an injection-moulded base. The base houses the device's electronic components, including a Raspberry Pi microcomputer, various actuators, and a compact loudspeaker. The central glass piece serves to amplify the output of the speaker located beneath it-glass's acoustic properties make it optimal for this function-while second glass piece supports it and holds a microphone attached to the base by a coiled cable. A prominent yellow knob rotates to control volume; if turned beyond its lowest setting it plays a recorded description of the system and its operation, using the same synthesised voices as the rest of the system. The audio stream played by the Babble devices is algorithmically constructed and represents the results of a number of modular processes. The first set of these seek new information from the web: 1.1) Twitter Scrape The system scrapes messages from a variety of Twitter™ feeds, including those from the user communities, from DECC, and from the National Grid. 1.2) Twitter Search The system searches Twitter™ using a number of terms (e.g. 'climate change', ''energy bills', 'renewable energy') to find relevant content more broadly. 1.3) URL Following If returned tweets contain 'http' and have been retweeted, the system follows the link and scrapes the first paragraph of text for output. 1.4) Energy Reports The system also tracks the National Grid, broadcasting information about current energy demand and carbon intensity, as well as changes in the amounts of energy generated by coal, gas, and wind. 1.5) Switched Off The reports hourly a list of things people tweet about having switched off (lights, heat, the internet). A second set of modules accepts input from participants, or manipulates the existing content. 2.1) User Input Users can input their own statements via the microphones on the Babble devices. Voice recordings are sent to the server, which passes them to a commercial service for speech-to-text translation, allowing them to be resynthesised both to anonymise inputs and make them congruent with the overall audio ecology. Text can also be entered directly via SMS text messaging. 2.2) Prompt Bot We developed a string of generic questions (e.g. 'how do you save energy?') that were read out occasionally by the system to prompt participant responses. 2.3)The Voice of Babble Markov algorithms are run on the content scraped from URLs, and separately on user inputs, to produce new text strings. Markov algorithms find word transition probabilities from a corpus; these probabilities can be used to generate new strings of words. The results tend to be locally sensible, but drift over time in a way we hoped would produce new ideas or at least be amusing. The system orchestrates the content in a variety of ways. For instance user input is played as soon as possible, while energy reports only appear hourly. Different voices are assigned to different streams of content, and content is repeated periodically. Distinct jingles signal different streams of content. Finally, the output stream is arranged to be continuous but uneven, with occasional gaps followed by bursts of several messages. |
| Type Of Technology | Physical Model/Kit |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | Energy Babbles were deployed to approximately 35 participant households and small businesses (e.g. a pub, a library) in eight 'energy communities' (areas with groups pursuing energy reduction or generation locally) around the UK. Impacts included new sources of energy-related information and possibilities for information exchange with other communities, as well as a heightened sensitivity to information overload. The Babbles have also appeared in seven (to date) exhibitions in the UK, Australia and the US where they have been viewed by thousands of visitors, impacting their understandings of issues related to energy demand reduction, community action and the prospects of technologies in these fields. |
| Description | A Sense of Energy Exhibition (The Senedd, Cardiff, Wales) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A Sense of Energy, Cardiff: This exhibition, which had previously been held at The White Building, London, was held at the Assembly for Wales (the Senedd), allowing Welsh politicians and policy makers access to the research and ideas generated through the project. The researchers involved went to Wales to participate in discussions, lectures and workshops, which included an Eco Champions Workshop for school groups interested in energy and the environment. These generated a lot of ideas and interest. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | A Sense of Energy Exhibition (The White Building, London) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A Sense of Energy, London: This exhibition explored the relationship between communities and energy production and consumption. Prior to this exhibition, held in the White Building in Hackney Wick, London, the research team met local groups interested in these issues and discussed their research. During the exhibition there was a walking tour that explored location-based data about the local environment, researchers involved in the project were on hand at a reception and gallery tours to talk about the project and discuss the research and the public was invited to discussions with researchers and other members of the public to discuss how we use energy & how that might need to change in the future. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Aesthetics & Affect: Engaging Energy Communities: Internet Entanglement Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A presentation by Dr Alex Wilkie, featuring his work on the Co-Designing Communities and Practice project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Aesthetics, Cosmopolitics & Design: DRS conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A conference presentation by Dr Alex Wilkie, featuring the Energy Babble, and part of a conference theme he organised attended by academics, design practitioners and public policy figures. The purpose of the paper and the theme was to re-invigorate understandings and debate about the role of aesthetics in design practice. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | BSA lecture (Leeds) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Alex Wilkie presented the paper "Speculative Method and Twitter: Bots, Energy and Three Conceptual Characters" to the British Sociological Association Annual Conference, with an audience of postgraduate research students, academic researchers and professional practitioners. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | CHI'15 presentation (Seoul) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Presented the Energy Babble (from the Energy Innovation project) to the CHI conference. Audience reaction was favourable and indicated increased interest in our methods and the particular prototype. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Climatic: Post Normal Design (Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon Uni, Pittsburgh, USA) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was an exhibition and symposium, that featured the Energy Babble. The exhibition focused on several issues, including climate change across the globe. The event included workshops and panel discussions and aimed to present alternative models for design that broaden the audience's capacity to understand and intervene in social and environmental crises. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Design 3.0 Forum |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Professor Bill Gaver joined an international panel to discuss speculation, research, and design inquiry, with reference to work done on the projects SUSTAINABILITY INVENTION AND ENERGY DEMAND REDUCTION: CO-DESIGNING COMMUNITIES AND PRACTICE and ProbeTools: Digital Devices for User Research |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Design Products Lecture, RCA |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Invited lecture on studio research (including project work) given to postgraduate MA and PhD students in the Design Products course (with others attending) at the Royal College of Art. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Designing Energy Experiments: Scripting Ambiguity and Curiosity in a Research Device |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A talk reflecting on the design process of the 'Energy Babble' research device highlighting and reflecting on the key design stages of the research device as part of the process of defining the material/visual form of the device. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Designing Research Devices. (Invited Lecture, University of Warwick) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | An invited lecture at the University of Warwick's Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies. The lecture was given by Alex Wilkie, one of the original members of the project team. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Energy Babble. Symposium Art and Design by Other Means: Research Methods and Practices |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A panel discussion regarding the Energy Babble. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Energy Babble: Embodiment of a Research Device (CHI 2016, San Jose, California) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Workshop and discussion which raised issues about technology and energy demand and reduction |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Exhibition at Web Science 2015 conference (Oxford) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Energy Babble was part of this exhibition that ran alongside the WebScience 2015 conference. It was open to the general public and academics attending the conference. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Experimental Thinking/Design Practices (Griffith Uni, Queensland College of Art) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Energy Babble was sent to Australia to take part in an exhibition in Sydney and went on to be displayed in Brisbane. The exhibitions explored approaches to the challenges of global warming, big data and embodied experience in the digital context. The exhibition was designed to spark discussion and interaction with the audience. Curators reported that the Babble was the source of a lot of debate, both at the exhibition and the online blog. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Feral Experimental Exhibition (National Institute for Experimental Arts, Sydney, Australia) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | An Energy Babble was sent to Australia to take part in this exhibition which explored approaches to the challenges of global warming, big data and embodied experience in the digital context. The exhibition was designed to spark discussion and interaction with the audience. Prof Bill Gaver delivered a lecture at the opening of the exhibition. Curators reported that the Babble was the source of a lot of debate, both at the exhibition and the online blog. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Interact'15 keynote (Bamberg) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited keynote to a major interaction conference that draws a good proportion of professional practitioners as well as postgraduate students and academic researchers. The purpose was to advocate a methodology for practice-based design research as well as the ludic approach to designing technologies. Audience reaction strongly indicated increased interest in both areas, and approaches were made for future collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Lecture (Hong Kong) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Lecture on studio methods and projects to a largely postgraduate research student audience. Organisers comments later indicated increased interest in our approaches. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Lecture Stockholm University (Stockholm) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Lecture on studio methods and projects to postgraduate taught and research students at Stockholm University. The organiser reported increased interest and uptake of our approach. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Overview of Interaction Research Studio projects |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | An overview of the work of the Interaction Research Studio, by Bill Gaver and Andy Boucher, including the work done on Co-Designing Communities and Probe Tools projects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Research Methods and Practices |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Panel discussion featuring Liliana Ovalle and her work on the Co-Designing Communities and Practice project. The panel explored the mutual approach of art and design and science and technology studies from multiple perspectives and the exchange of practices and experiences between researchers that have undertaken their work in the local context. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | RtD keynote panel (Cambridge) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Participated in panel with two other speakers on Research Through Design and related topics. The event was held at Microsoft Research Laboratory and engaged a mix of industry staff, professional practitioners and academic researchers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Seminar (Eindhoven) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Lecture given in association with a public viva to a mixture of postgraduate research students, staff, and general public members. Focused on methodological approach as well as recent projects. Indications of increased interest and acceptance of our approach. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Symposium presentation (Oxford) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Alex Wilkie and Mike Michael discussed the methods used in the Energy Innovation project as well as project outcomes to a mixed audience of postgraduate research students, academic researchers and medical workers at the 'Experience as Evidence? A Symposium on the Sciences of Subjectivity in Healthcare, Policy and Practice' at the University of Oxford. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | TECUSO seminar (Barcelona) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Alex Wilkie discussed the Energy Innovation project in terms of methodologies and outcomes to an audience of postgraduate research students and academic researchers at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, December 19 2013. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| Description | Talk at MAGNET (the Media and Games Network), NYU, New York, USA) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Talk to NYU staff, students and design practitioners. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Thriving on Uncertainty: Keynote - Halfway to the Future Symposium |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Studio member gave the keynote speech for the Arts & Design-led Approaches session, reflecting upon his paper Ambiguity as a Resource for Design and the Naturewatch and Co-Designing Communities And Practice projects. This prompted questions and discussion as well as social media activity about the research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Workshop - Hyperbole and Restraint as Tactics for Design |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | 40 CHI design practitioners participated in this workshop to explore creative activities. The project work inspired design exercises and sparked discussion about our methods and style of product represented by the Energy Babble. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |