Despite many contributions to Sustainable HCI stressing the importance of “moving beyond the individual”, a majority of HCI work is still targeted mainly at consumers or resource users. However, many stakeholders influence resource use and including such stakeholders in design work can open up new design opportunities for supporting sustainable practices. In this paper, we present results from a longitudinal study of practices related to energy improvement work in housing cooperatives. During the study, we discovered new opportunities for interactive technologies to support this work when we involved various stakeholders other than housing cooperatives. In addition, we discuss more general implications for design aiming to support diverse stakeholder engagement in practices related to resource use: which stakeholders and practices to include, temporal aspects of engagement, and opportunities for supporting shared responsibility for resource use.

We need to transition our society in a more sustainable direction, for example through enormous cuts in carbon emissions. Yet this future is hard to envision and work towards. In this project, with a transition design posture, we have designed tools that we believe can be useful to initiate dialogues and reflections for the future. In particular we are interested in using the bridging between provocative and affirmative design as a way to explore and articulate what people see as the lost and found of such a transition. In this paper, we present a study where we used a practice lens to address one possible low carbon future through a provocation workshop. We present our methodology, the tentative tools we used during the workshop and the experiences as expressed by the workshop participants.

The future is inherently hard to predict, yet we know there are various factors that will limit the future of computing (scarcity of materials, energy shortages and various biophysical limits) in both substantial and disruptive ways. When we look at the past and at mainstream projected computing futures, all we see is exponential growth. While it is easy to reject such trajectories, it is much harder to imagine and propose credible, preferable and evocative alternatives. Breaking away from default modes of thinking about computing is difficult but possible, and we here present a methodology-counterfactual history-that can help us imagine alternative scenarios for computing. We argue that by learning from counterfactual pasts ("what-if scenarios"), we can more easily liberate our ideas from various preconceptions that hamper them and box them in. This makes it possible to generate and entertain a more diverse "portfolio" of ideas about the future and help us better prepare for meeting future challenges.

Background: As a renewable energy solution, photovoltaics (PVs) are crucial in the transition to a more sustainable energy system. Besides large PV installations, household adoption of PVs will be an important contribution to this transition. However, the adoption of PVs on a household level faces many barriers, with gathering and understanding information being one of the major barriers. The aim of this article is to do an in-depth analysis of how households search for and interpret information about PVs and to discuss how to reach different groups with information. Methods: The results in this paper are based on three interview studies made between autumn 2013 and autumn 2016. In the first interview study, seven non-adopters of photovoltaics were interviewed. In the second study, seven adopters of photovoltaics were addressed. In the third study, a total of 44 households were interviewed, with a mix of non-adopters and adopters. In total, 58 households were interviewed. Results: From the interviews, we developed four ideal types for PV adoption. The non-adopters use few sources of information, find the information complicated, and have a tendency to emphasize barriers rather than enablers for PV adoptions. The environmentally engaged adopters search a lot of information but find it difficult to know when they have enough or the right information. They also find information too technical and complicated and find it hard to compare quotes. The professionally skilled group easily accesses information but also experienced problems in comparing quotes and are critical to that many problems occur during the installation process. The accidental adopters more or less happen to get a PV system and needed little information. They usually took the offer from the provider first met. Conclusions: We can conclude that when dividing the households into different ideal types, it is possible to detect what kind of information measures different groups need. To get a future increase of the number of installed PVs, it is important to develop different measures in parallel, to meet the needs from the different groups.

There has been an increasing interest in discussing the consequences of the technologies we invent and study in HCI. Whether it is climate change, ethical computing, capitalist and neo-liberal models of commerce and society, grassroots movements, big data or alternative paradigms in distributed systems, this workshop will invite participants to explore these consequences and ask how we move forward with responsibility and new forms of knowing and knowledge. We invite participants to join us, as we cast forward fifty years to 2068 to imagine the future of wisdom, and to reflect on how we got there. By writing Fictional Abstracts, an abstract from a research paper yet to be written, we will unpick critical tensions in the advancement of computing over the next decades. The workshop will develop perspectives on the futures of computing and critically reflect on the assumptions, methods, and tools for enabling (and disabling) such futures.

On the necessity of rocking the boat Computers and digitalization have greatly shaped our world and are now an unavoidable part of modern society. Weiser’s (1991) vision of ubiquitous computing has in many respects not only been met but has in affluent parts of the world been surpassed (Bell & Dourish, 2007). Digital artifacts and devices surround us and have invisibly and seamlessly permeated everything we do. Our modern societies are however not sustainable. We have overstepped several planetary boundaries and risk overstepping several more (Steffen et al., 2015). We are about to reach limits as to the resources we can extract from the earth (Bardi, 2014), and the changes wreaked are by now so profound that they will likely last for a geological period of time (Steffen et al., 2007). In light of this, it is of utmost importance to strive towards a sustainable society, and this is a responsibility that falls on many disciplines and sectors. We believe that engineering students could be key drivers in this change since many will eventually enter positions of power from which they will make decisions that will shape our future society. 

This paper presents a project that explores how different values and lifestyle choices are related to sustainable practices. The goal has been to develop an understanding of both complexity in people’s everyday practices as well as patterns in this complexity to be used when designing interventions for sustainable lifestyles. In the project, we have used a mixed methods approach in order to develop a more comprehensive picture of both the larger patterns of the complexities of everyday practices as well as the particulars of sustainability engagement in Sweden. In this paper we present the initial results from a Swedish study of people with different values and their relations to sustainability, based on Schwartz Theory of Basic Human Values. In particular, we present their overall perspective on sustainability, their existing sustainable practices, and their needs for transitions towards more sustainable lifestyles.

The pathway to a sustainable society is not clear, and we need to consider different developmental possibilities. This paper describes the results of a research project in the intersection of HCI and Futures Studies as well as in the intersection between "the future information society" and sustainability. We here present parts of the body of materials that were developed in a multi-year research project with the aim of describing and evaluating the sustainability impact of possible future information societies. We also discuss some of the lessons learned and what HCI and design fiction can learn from Futures Studies in general and from this project in particular. The main stakeholders in this project have been city administrators and corporate partners, and the overarching goal has primarily been to influence planning processes at the regional (Stockholm, Sweden) level.

Vi måste acceptera den föreliggande verkligheten – endast därigenom har vi utsikt att förstå den, att relatera till den för att påverka den och skapa kultur som är ett smidigt redskap för omställningen.

Så inleds Vitiden – en energifiktion där övergången till ett mer hållbart samhälle utforskas i ett samspel mellan text och bild. I det framåtsyftande manifestet skissas Vitiden upp som ett svar på dagens ekologiska och sociala utmaningar. Manifestets höga tonläge och ambitioner kommenteras av en bildburen framtidsarkeologi, uppbyggd kring fiktiva fragment från framtiden. Infällda bilder ur acceptera-manifestet¹, vilket även parafraseras i Vitidens inledande stycke, sätter energifiktionen i relation till det modernistiska samhällsbygget och kritiken därav. En generös notapparat bidrar med ytterligare perspektiv.

Vitiden utforskar hur ett energi- och klimatmässigt hållbart Sverige skulle kunna te sig, med fokus på vardagslivets praktiker. Bokens titel Vitiden pekar på ett framtida samhälle där det gemensamma är centralt, och energi är en högt värderad resurs. Vitiden är baserad på ett av Energimyndighetens scenarion (Legato) ur framtidsstudien "Fyra framtider: energisystemet efter 2020".

Vitidens syfte är att bjuda in till samtal, reflektion och diskussion om hur vårt samhälle kan organiseras för att klimatmålen ska nås. Genom en kombination av text och bild skapas en komplex bild av omställningen som ger utrymme för såväl moraliska ställningstaganden, utopiska drömmar och vardagstristess.Vitiden är uppbyggd av fyra huvudsakliga delar:

1. Ett manifest, där vi ger scenariot Legato röst att tala om behovet av omställning i relation till fyra vardagspraktiker "Vi bor", "Vi äter", "Vi reser" och "Vi arbetar och har fritid".
2. En framtidsarkeologi, som representerar hur samhället och vardagslivet skulle kunna te sig om Legato infrias.
3. Inklippta bilder ur acceptera-manifestet som publicerades 1931, och som manade på funktionalismens och modernismens genombrott i Sverige. Denna omställning är av samma magnitud som den vi nu står inför, varför en samläsning av Legato och acceptera är intressant.
4. En notapparat där vi forskare kommenterar manifestet genom att hänvisa till forskning samt en liten dos poesi.

Vitiden är utvecklad av forskare vid Green Leap, KTH tillsammans med grafiska formgivare och illustratörer. Projektet är finansierat av Energimyndigheten.

¹ Asplund, G., Gahn, W., Markelius, S., Paulsson, G., Sundahl, E., Åhrén, U. 1980[1931] acceptera. Tiden förlag. Faksimil.

We must accept the present reality – only thereby do we have the possibility to understand it, relate to it to influence it and create culture that is a flexible tool for the transition.

This is the opening paragraph of "Vitiden - an energy fiction"¹ where the transition to a more sustainable society is explored through interacting text and image. In the forward-looking and text-based manifesto, Vitiden is outlined as an answer to today's ecological and social challenges. The high pitch and ambitions of the manifesto are commented on by an image-based future archaeology, constructed by fictional fragments of the future. Inset images from the acceptera manifesto², which is also paraphrased in the introductory paragraph of Vitiden, relates the energy fiction to the modernist societal development and the critique thereof. A generous body of annotations contributes with further perspectives.

1) The term Vitiden is Swedish and can be translated to the 'we-age'. In contrast to other 'ages' such as the bronze age or the atom age, Vitiden is not a description of a historical era, but a suggested future, an age yet to come, distinguished by its emphasis on togetherness.

¹An energy fiction is a design fiction or essentially any image of the future dealing primarily with questions related to energy, in this case as an enabling and constraining factor for sociomaterial entanglements and practices to emerge and endure.

²Asplund, G., Gahn, W., Markelius, S., Paulsson, G., Sundahl, E., Åhrén, U. 1980[1931] acceptera. Tiden förlag. Faksimil.

There is unequivocal evidence that we are facing the greatest energy transition since the dawn of the industrial age. We need to urgently shift from a global fossil fuel and CO2-emitting energy system to 1) decrease our CO2 emissions and combat the effects of climate change and 2) face a future of depleting fossil fuel resources. Yet there is still a lack of collective action to start taking effective measures to meet these challenges. We argue that there is a need for narratives in general and for a special type of narrative in particular, allohistorical scenarios, that act as thought experiments whose main function is to defamiliarize us with what is taken for granted. Such scenarios invite us to explore plausible parallel paths, thereby making it possible to imagine futures that are essentially different from the path-dependence of an unyielding historical past. Such futures enable us to grapple with a present that is saturated by the inertia of past decisions and the sunken costs of existing infrastructure. We here present the design rationale for the Coalworld scenario: an alternative world where only half the oil ever existed. We also describe the methodology and the assumptions that underlie the Coalworld scenario.