Designing with improvisations
How everyday practices with technologies shape sustainable transitions
E. van Beek (TU Delft - Human Technology Relations)
A. Bozzon – Promotor (TU Delft - Sustainable Design Engineering)
E. Giaccardi – Promotor (TU Delft - Human Technology Relations)
Stella Boess – Copromotor (TU Delft - Human Technology Relations)
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Abstract
The challenges faced by society today demand ways of thinking and designing that go beyond the individual. This dissertation is concerned with sustainable transitions, and focuses on everyday practices, technologies within those practices, and the role of design.
Empirically, the research focuses on the transition from gas boilers to heat pumps in Dutch homes. Implementing heat pumps for residential buildings on a large scale should reduce CO2 emissions and save energy while providing comfortable indoor climate of homes. However, in everyday life in households, heat pumps are often not used as the technology developers intended. Ethnography, design research and interviews with value chain professionals are used to gather data and better understand how everyday practices with technologies are performed and understood.
Based on this analysis, I question dominant human-centered design approaches, which prioritize individual users and align with current practices, arguing that they fall short in supporting societal transitions. In my work I take steps towards a more-than-individual-human-centered approach, which embraces the improvisational nature of everyday life and the co-performance of humans and technologies, with the goal of benefitting design work within sustainable transitions.