Abstract
The diploma will research and explore design opportunities related to renewable energy in the context of the family home. Concepts related to local production and/or conservation of energy will be investigated.
Keywords
Energy, Distributed Energy Production/Conservation, Use Qualities, Home, Family, Everyday Life, Physical Computing, Mobile Technology, Communication, Design Research, Lightness, Renewable Energy
Introduction
The modern world as of today consumes resources at a pace not sustainable in the future. “Earth 3.0” (Rennie, 2008) has been launched as a term for a situation where we keep the prosperity of the industrial revolution (Earth 2.0, i.e. today) and return to a sustainability of the earth before modern times (Earth 1.0). By using design methodologies and looking into our closest environment, the home and family, I will try to find and create opportunities that can impact behavior concerning energy use without moralizing and restrict our prosperity, but by trying to move forward on constructive and engaging path.
Background
Distributed Energy Production/Conservation
The reasoning for covering my bases with production/conservation is that I see those topics as being closely related. The project might address just production or conservation, but a combination would also be valid to explore.
Energy production and use is a source for global attention. Today most of the energy is produced in centralized power plants and used by all sorts of end users with various consciousnesses concerning the energy consumption. Current initiatives for energy made from renewable sources have introduced the possibility to produce your own power in a decentralized way (Rifkin, 2002). What design opportunities lies in promoting a decentralized way of thinking about energy?
Title
“Untapped Energy” – for a person, like me, who are firmly plugged into the power grid it feels like renewable energy has a long way to go before it becomes natural in my household. We need some sort of “tap” that could deliver the sun or the wind right in our kitchen when we need it. The working title suggests that there is a potential for concepts to explore this field and maybe bring renewable energy closer to home.
Context
By using the family, the standard western family of parents with kids, as the base context for my development I have a familiar situation that lots of people can relate to. This context will help my project that its presentation will reach more people outside of the design community. The family as an institution also has a wide set of connections with its surroundings. I believe this will open a range of possible design opportunities.
Motivation
I enjoy research into technical fields that have potential untapped insights. Hopefully those insights can be converted to useful concepts that enable more transparent and approachable interfaces between man and technology. This involves writing as a tool to get a fundamental understanding of the area, but also practical design tasks incorporating aesthetics and designing experiences as well as developing concepts and products. Moving a foggy concept into a readily understandable and useful artefact is an interesting design challenge.
Ambitions
The Diploma will aim to explore and design concepts and ideas that aim to challenge existing preconceptions of current energy production/conservation and try to give insights into where this will go in the near future. What it not will do is to deliver a readymade product or service at a level where it can be industrialized.
Methods
These methods will be at the core of this diploma:
- Literature studies, including articles in magazines and online.
- To gain an understanding of the field.
- “State of the art” research and evaluation.
- Surveying the field of renewable energy in homes related to technology and design.
- To understand what has been done and why it works/not works. Together with” State of the art” research this will help positioning my project relative to the others.
- Inspirational research
- Looking into ideas and visuals that not necessarily are related, but can serve as wildcards in the concept development.
- Visual Idea bank
- A visual storage of the ideas encountered throughout the project.
- Physical and/or digital exploration of ideas and concepts.
- To detail concepts to a level useful for testing and evaluation.
- Evaluation of explored ideas and concepts.
- To gain insight into positive and negative sides of the developed concepts. Also compared to relevant existing concepts.
The two last points in the list will constitute the main product of the diploma.
Deliverables
During the exploration phase I will develop one or more concepts, digital or physical, that is used in my research and evaluation. I will also deliver documentation of the research, exploration and e-valuation of the work done throughout the semester. This documentation will draw on the resources gathered such as photos, drawings, blog posts other assets generated. The argument for keeping a blog is to write notes at a higher level than I would do in my private notebook. This helps me to formulate ideas and thoughts while presenting them to others in a readable format and thereby hopefully contribute to the discourse in the field.
Schedule

Initial schedule for planned tasks
Initial bibliography
Bell, G., & Dorish, P. (2006). Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision. London: Springer-Verlag London Limited.
Bonsiepe, G. (1995). The Chain of Innovation – Science, Technology, Design. Design Issues , 33-36.
Datschefski, E. (2001). The total beauty of sustainable products. Crans-Près-Céligny: RotoVision.
Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse. London: Penguin Books.
Igoe, T. (2008). Making Things Talk. In T. Igoe, Making Things Talk.
Löwgren, J., & Stolterman, E. (2004). Thoughtful Interaction Design. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rennie, J. (2008). Editor’s letter. Scientific American , 2.
Thackara, J. (2005). In the bubble. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Webb, M. (2006, October 21). 3C Products. Retrieved February 1, 2008, from Schulze & Webb: http://schulzeandwebb.com/blog/2006/11/21/3c-products/
World Alliance for Distributed Energy. (2008, January 1). WADE. Retrieved January 14, 2009, from WADE info: http://www.localpower.org/abt_mission.html