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.

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.

The EnergyLife mobile interface incorporates lessons from environmental psychology and feedback intervention to relay information from appliance sensors, offeringa gaming environment that rewards usersfor decreased electricity consumption.