Lecture 9

Practice - Opportunities for ICT to support sustainable changes in society?

Lecturer: Hanna Hasselqvist, KTH

Content: The lecture concerns the complex and uncertain third order effects of ICT - what are the opportunities for ICT to support sustainable changes in society? Products and projects that address this typically focus on changing the behaviour of individuals, e.g. by visualising data or providing information on environmental effects related to a certain behaviour. However, this might in many cases not lead to any long-term changes in behaviour and we need to understand practices in society, rather than only focusing on individuals, to better support long-term change. During the lecture we will look at examples of projects on sustainable transportation and energy use in homes to see how practices affect the choices we make and what the role of ICT can be in supporting more sustainable practices.

About: Hanna Hasselqvist is a PhD student at the Media Technology and Interaction Design (MID) department. Her research interest is in the use of design and ICT for moving towards a more socially and environmentally sustainable world.

Literature:

Strengers, Y. Smart energy in everyday life: are you designing for resource man? interactions, 21, 4 (2014), 24-31.

Kakee Scott, Conny Bakker, and Jaco Quist. 2012. Designing change by living change. Design Studies 33, 3: 279–297.