This thesis introduces and critically reflects on a design programme, Storyforming, that explores ways to design objects and places to enrich daily life narratives. Using an experimental design approach, the goal is to exemplify and explore this idea with discursive artefacts that, through their physical and temporal form, act as catalysts in the construction of meaningful experiences.

In the current sustainability discourse, behavioural change has been pointed out as a key factor in achieving a sustainable society. Historically, design has been very effective in increasing production and consumption behaviours by creating new types of needs and, in a way, manufacturing desire (Forty, 1986). Drawing on this, the overarching aim of this thesis is the investigation of the ways design, through a suggested programme, can afford alternative types of meaningful experiences in contrast to the prevailing consumer culture.

The empirical work reported in the thesis stems from several research projects looking into the matter of energy use in relation to design. In addition, two of the projects have been carried out in the author’s own design practice. Some concepts are explored more in-depth—involving events such as field studies, situated interviews, workshops, prototype building, design interventions in the form of domestication probes, and contextual studies ranging from a few weeks up to a year—while other concepts exist only as sketches or photo montages. The diversity of these concepts, the design experiments, helps span a design space becoming a new provisional design programme. The idea for this programme has evolved from observations and reflections made throughout the experiments presented in the thesis.

The general results are the suggested approach of Storyforming, which focuses on the design of artefacts supporting daily narratives that can be used to create engagement, meaning, and alternative values applicable to the discourse of sustainable behaviour.

Specific contributions are the selection of design experiments. In the thesis, the experiments have first been examined from the perspective of stories and forming as a basis for the new programme formulation. Through this articulation of the programme, the experiments are revisited through three leitmotifs, part of the provisional programme focusing on different properties related to the aspect of forming. From the perspective of the user, these themes—seeing and accessing designs, exploring and expressing complexity, and sharing experiences and negotiating use—are finally elaborated on in relation to other theoretical concepts as well as their implications for future research.

This paper explores the border between technology and design (form giving) from a feminist perspective. Looking at the energy system and how it has been integrated in the household, we want to address the underlying structures that have been built into the ecology of electrical appliances used in daily life, preserving certain norms that could be questioned from both a gender and a sustainability perspective. We have created an alternative electricity meter, the Energy AWARE Clock, addressing design issues uncovered in an initial field study. In this paper, we will make parallels to these issues. We also use feminist technoscience studies scholar Donna Haraway’s theory of the cyborg in order to clarify useful concepts that can be derived from feminist theory and that can act as important tools for designers engaged in creative processes. From our own experience with the Energy AWARE Clock this approach has great potential for questioning and rethinking present norms within sustainability and gender, from the viewpoints of design research and design practice.

This article highlights how a gender perspective can be performed by design as critical practice. Two common household appliances - a drill and a hand blender - were used as a starting point. Inspired by Derrida's term deconstruction, the product language of the tools was analysed and then switched in two new prototypes: the hand blender Mega Hurricane Mixer and the drill Dolphia. The prototypes were shown at exhibitions and lectures. The comments by the audience show that a switching of product language entails that their relationship to the artifact itself also changes. Overall, the elements, which previously had been perceived as 'lacking transparency', were now visible. For example, the drill was identified as a "drill for women" and considered inadequate for drilling, and the mixer revealed needs and functions that the traditional mixer did not satisfy. This implies that design should not only be seen as 'final products' but as a part of a social process that takes place between the user, the artifact and the norms of society. By switching the product languages it was possible to highlight how gender values are connected to each design and each artifact. This means that the design of the artifacts around us is not fixed, but can be renegotiated and situated in time, place, and context.

Integrating sustainability in computing education entails broadening the scope of the education, but how can that be done while maintaining student engagement? Climate change and species extinction can appear far removed from data structures and algorithms to say the least. In our ongoing work of integrating sustainability in our Media Technology programme, we have addressed this gap by introducing systems thinking games and activities to broaden the scope, as well as by situating the issues addressed in the course in relation to their future profession. In this paper, we present our experiences of introducing and playing systems thinking games, how the systems thinking exercise sessions were conducted, outcomes of the sessions and finally some lessons learnt. Furthermore, we present and analyse changes we did to the exercises and that led to a richer material for discussions in the classroom.

In the field of Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction, there are many examples of research exploring how ICT can be used to influence people’s energy use. Typically, this research focuses on domestic electricity use and on how to persuade individuals to reduce or change their use of electricity. However, the effectiveness of such approaches has been questioned and it has been proposed to look beyond the individual to the communities, corporations and governments that affect people’s practices. In my PhD work I have studied roles and responsibilities that could influence energy related practices for the cases of personal transportation needs and energy use in apartment buildings. I have also analysed how ICT, together with other interventions, could support a more sustainable use of energy and identified important design aspects for such support. These initial findings are presented and discussed together with suggestions for directions of future work.

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.

The use of practices as a unit of analysis has been suggested in order to scale up efforts within sustainable HCI and to shift the focus from changing individual behaviours to supporting transitions at a societal level. In this paper, we take a practice approach to the case of sustainable transportation, and more specifically to car-free transportation. Car use is intertwined in many practices and managing life without a car is difficult, particularly for people in contexts where owning at least one car per family is the norm. We studied three families in Stockholm who replaced their cars with different combinations of light electric vehicles during one year. From the families' experiences, we identified a number of opportunities for designers of interactive technologies to support environmental pioneers in the particular case of car-free living, as well as to support transitions towards sustainable practices in general.

Creating learning spaces can be a project for designers who want to engage in sustainability transitions. When designing learning spaces, alternative design strategies are key. Therefore, designers need to adapt their positions and find a humbler design approach.

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.

For sustainable practices to emerge, they have to be tried out. In the design intervention A Car-free Year, we studied the particularities of three families’ changed practices. With a collaborative mind-set, the practices’ constituting elements were analysed, and their intertwined links followed, forming possible design concepts. When designing these seeds for changed practices, we have found, through the knowledge gained from the participants’ different perspectives, possibilities to design initiatives that could enable more people to live car-free. We believe that designing enabling ecosystems, where all types of elements encourage sustainable practices, can be an important role of sustainable design. Furthermore, design research can challenge existing societal norms, as clearly revealed in this project, and consequently inspire more people to make sustainable lifestyle choices.

This paper describes an interventionist design research project called a Car-free Year, where three families substitute their cars for a fleet of light electric vehicles during one year. The aim is to study how this intervention changes the families’ everyday practices, as well as suggest how design can support and sustain such a change on a larger scale. If radically new paradigms are to be shaped, changes are needed both in what is considered normalities and in people’s everyday practices. We argue that design can play an important role in the transition towards more sustainable futures and new normalities.

Transitions of unsustainable everyday practices into more sustainable ones require new approaches to explore possible futures and encourage change. Trying new practices and experiencing alternative configurations of sociomaterial assemblages can increase reflexivity as well as assist in exploring potential futures. Design can assist in co-creating possible futures and bridging discussions about the preferred strategies to reach them. If sustainability is defined as an on-going process calling for dialogue, there could be potentials for using practice-based design research, and in particular co-design approaches, at the intersections of these dialogues. By analysing methods for reflexivity and collaboration in two design research projects within sustainable mobility, we here suggest design strategies for prototyping change at an individual level and communicating the experiences of such change to people with power to trigger and direct change. This may be particularly useful for addressing sustainability which both requires dealing with complex problems and extensive collaboration. 

Mobility as a Service (MaaS), where different shared modes of transportation are bundled into one easily accessible service, plays an important role in the shift towards more sustainable transport systems. In this article, we present empirical research with the aim to understand how the barriers to increased shared travel with MaaS can be lowered. The concept of corporate MaaS (CMaaS) is introduced, and empirical results are presented from a study of CMaaS at a workplace of 14,000 employees in Sweden. The findings are based on 77 interviews with CMaaS users, performed in four iterative rounds using service design methods. Social practice theories are used as analytical lens to attempt to understand travel practices in the context of CMaaS. As CMaaS (and MaaS) are socio-technical systems, several perspectives need to be integrated in order to reach this understanding; all system components, including materials (e.g. the user application, the transport modes), competences (knowledge of how to use the materials), and meanings (understandings of travel habits, lifestyle choices, and employer relations) need to be analysed. Through this analytical lens, three barriers to adoption of CMaaS and sustainable transport were identified: inadequate integration of the internal transport system with external transport systems; corporate policy, culture and norms that conflict with using the services; and system limitations due to laws and regulations. All these barriers are also relevant for understanding MaaS services in general.

In traditional engineering, technologies are viewed as the core of the engineering design, in a physical world with a large number of diverse technological artefacts. The real world, however, also includes a huge number of social components—people, communities, institutions, regulations and everything that exists in the human mind—that have shaped and been shaped by the technological components. Smart urban ecosystems are examples of large-scale Socio-Technical Systems (STS) that rely on technologies, in particular on the Internet-of-Things (IoT), within a complex social context where the technologies are embedded. Designing applications that embed both social complexity and IoT in large-scale STS requires a Socio-Technical (ST) approach, which has not yet entered the mainstream of design practice. This chapter reviews the literature and presents our experience of adopting an ST approach to the design of a community-oriented smart grid application. It discusses the challenges, process and outcomes of this apporach, and provides a set of lessons learned derived from this experience that are also deemed relevant to the design of other smart urban ecosystems.

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.

Sustainable development calls for fundamental societal changes. Technological development alone won’t suffice; in order to reach sustainable development objectives there is a need to rethink the way we live our lives. Sustainable lifestyles are today however often depicted through a sacrifice-based cultural narrative, in which losses, rather than gains stand in focus. The paper takes its starting point in recognizing that the future is open and possible to influence, but also that (ideas about) the future influences present decisions. These ideas, or expectations, about the future thus provide an opportunity for intervention. Through presenting concrete and positive representations of what a sustainable future might imply in terms of everyday life, the expectations for such a future might be altered. This paper aims to explore how design fiction and backcasting can be used to alter expectations regarding sustainable lifestyles, through creating concrete and engaging visions of everyday life in a sustainable future. The paper also presents a project based on this approach as well as some early findings from this.

This paper discusses how future studies and design could enable a more conscious and participatory engagement in our common future. The starting point being that representations of the future are often done in an abstract and quantitative manner, which hinders a broad engagement, and understanding of the implications of the scenarios presented. We discuss how on-going research including experimental design methodologies can be used to make images of the future more concrete and accessible. Finally, we argue, not only for prototyping as a method to make the ungraspable future more concrete, but foremost for a designerly approach to the most important of all stakes - the future.

People’s domestic habits are increasingly being targeted to reduce levels of CO2 emissions. Whereas domestic energy consumption has received a lot of attention with several reported studies on sustainable practices, there are very few studies on workplace practices. Nevertheless, these are considered as having much potential for reducing energy consumption. This paper presents the findings from two field studies where two different types of prototypes for visualizing energy use were designed, implemented and evaluated in different types of workplace settings – factories and offices. The studies used design probes to explore how visual feedback for electricity use was interpreted and acted upon by employees in work settings. A striking observation was that it is very difficult to get people to change to more pro-environmental behavior and practices in a workplace environment. The paper discusses why this might be the case.

In this position paper we discuss a set of problems particular to computing within limits that draws on psychological and sociological barriers. The enormity of the predicaments we are facing, global climate change and resource scarcity, together with the social, cultural and national settings in which we are facing these predicaments, are seriously hampering our possibility to address them. We argue that without confronting the underlying psychology that perpetuates our current state of un-sustainability, there is little computing can hope to achieve. Furthermore, we also argue that these psychological limits to computing do not only concern the users of our systems, often portrayed as the people in need of behavioral change, but also ourselves, as researchers within computing. In this paper we start exploring what these psychological limits could be, what ideas computing for sustainability has tried but should now retire, and start discussing a way forward.

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.

To understand possibilities and barriers for ride-sharing in work commuting, 451 persons living in the same suburban area and working at the same site were invited to join a ride-sharing program and use a mobile application. Two quantitative web surveys and 16 in-depth interviews have been performed. The results have been analysed using social practice theories as an analytical lens. The participants understood the benefits with the ride-sharing practice, but out of the 451 invited participants, only 8 downloaded the required mobile application for the ride-sharing program. Different to previous results in the literature, trust and security were not seen as issues in this case. Instead the expected loss of flexibility was seen as the main barrier. The participants found a meaning in “being a green commuter” and understood that ride-sharing could contribute to decrease challenges of congestion, environmental impact, and overfull parking places. However, they rated their own current flexibility and convenience in commuting higher than the expected benefits from ride-sharing.

It is increasingly clear that the sustainability transitions needed to counter climate change depend on lifestyle changes. However, the task of encouraging a shift to more sustainable lifestyles is highly complex. This paper describes an emerging design research method to explore possible pathways towards such sustainable transitions. We describe a living labs-approach based on design practice, developed within Green Leap, a design and sustainability research group at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. We refer to this method as Designerly Living Labs. Based on empirical learnings from four such Living Labs we present eight key characteristics. We then highlight some important aspects that affect how future concepts and solutions can be explored in connection with the lifestyles and material contexts on which they depend. One finding is that ‘living the change’ may be needed to identify potential positive, and often social gains from more sustainable practices.

This paper addresses the constellation of various actors from private and public

sectors represented by three companies, a municipality, a non-profit

organization, a research lab and users to collaborate on bringing forward a

sustainability driven disruptive innovation. The purpose of the paper is to

investigate how the various actors’ interests and contributions influence the

management of the collaboration setup and what barriers and enablers boost or

impede the outcome of the setup, i.e. deploying an innovation with sustainability

promise. We argue that the alignment of diverse actors’ interests and aims for

the innovation in collaborative settings is crucial for the collaboration to lead to

desirable outcomes. However, only alignment at an abstract level cannot ensure

success even when actors bring competencies that balance the innovation

requirements. Rather, creating cohesion and commitment of all actors

simultaneously at a concrete level is necessary. The integration of new

approaches to collaboration such as design methods may strengthen

commitment despite actors coming from different organizational cultures and

traditions.

Sustainability driven innovations differ from current established technologies imposing new

requirements on users and often interdependent with other actors’ changes. Strategic Niche Management

(SNM) stresses interactions between actors through niches i.e. protected spaces for experimentation to

support innovation. However, it is unclear what activities are necessary when different actors are

involved in developing and diffusing sustainability innovation. This paper aims at identifying activities

crucial for sustainability innovation in an implemented mobility project. The results show that cocreation

through iterations and reflections by combinations of diverse actors and users can be considered

a core process for sustainability innovation. Six activities are identified as critical: matching the

interdependencies by combining the actors’ diverse competences and resources; facilitating to steer the

group of actors into actions; engaging users at early stages of innovation; trying to drive change by

offering the users an opportunity; co-creating through a multitude of actors with the development and

usage simultaneously; steering and facilitating to enable co-creation.

Low-carbon mobility alternatives, such as shared services integrating light electric vehicles, support transitions to sustainable transport systems. However, new products and services are not enough, as changes must also incorporate the practices of travelling, infrastructure, and mobility cultures in which users of mobility solutions are core stakeholders. This paper argues that userinvolvement is necessary in sustainable innovation processes but that the expected diversity of user roles and their involvement can also lead to contrasting outcomes for sustainable innovation transitions. Guided by theory in user involvement, this study investigated users and nonusers of light electric vehicles in a sharing mobility service system set up as living lab in two large workplaces in Sweden. Fifty-one interviews with employees at the workplaces were conducted during the implementation process and analysed combined with a questionnaire and data from system tracking through sensor technology. The paper finds that both users and non-users are co-creators in building momentum for sustainable mobility alternatives and provides a spectrum of user roles with defined characteristics. Four roles are distinguished within this spectrum: vigilant users, passive collaborators, active decision makers and ambassadors. We suggest that a convergent activation strategy is deployed for involving a full spectrum of users in order to capture their insights in ways that positively affect transition. Such a strategy addresses users and non-users as part of decision-making concerning alternatives and cultivates a culture of user collaboration, while also enabling a plurality of contributions in order to challenge existing regimes and established practices among individuals

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 a lack of futures studies addressing consumption and lifestyles at the level of everyday life. This article reports on the transformation of the policy-orienting scenario "Legato", developed by the Swedish Energy Agency in 2016, to a practice-oriented design speculation. The article describes the process of transformation and the resulting energy fiction “Vitiden”. The transformation involved three acts of translation. First, the scope of the transition was explored in-depth, both quantitatively and qualitatively, providing a more detailed understanding of the gap between the 'sustainable' 2050 and today. Second, the scenario Legato was analysed for practices and elements of practices that could be elaborated to descriptions of how everyday life could play out in this future. The third step involved re-presenting the practice-oriented scenario as a design speculation. The design speculation was given the form of a book named “Vitiden - an energy fiction” in which the reformulated version of Legato is presented through text and images, combining a forwardlooking manifesto and a backward-looking future archaeology. Besides the written content and the pictures and illustrations of Vitiden, the design of the book is also part of the speculation as it embodies an exploration of how publications, including form, graphic design and choice of materials, could look like in a future such as Legato.

To reach the full potential of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), especially its projected positive environmental impacts, the barriers to development and implementation processes must be identified. However, studies identifying such MaaS barriers are rare. Following an interdisciplinary approach, this paper aims to bridge this gap by adding knowledge on barriers to MaaS development and implementation using four perspectives (service design, business model, user travel attitude and behavior, and system impacts). Following a systems thinking approach, the barriers are investigated at three levels (individual, organizational and societal) to show their relationships. This paper investigates a specific type of MaaS, namely Corporate Mobility as a Service (CMaaS). The results obtained by investigating a large-scale CMaaS pilot provide implications of general barriers to MaaS development and implementation. The findings presented in this paper provide knowledge and guidance to MaaS stakeholders.