The Energy and Co-Designing Communities (ECDC) research team at Goldmsiths, University of London has an interactive website at www.ecdc.ac.uk. As a collaboration between Science and Technology Studies and Design, ECDC seeks to understand how new technologies can be designed to support communities in reducing their energy consumption. In particular, they are interested in getting at what is often neglected in studies of energy consumption and
its reduction: the imaginative, playful, emotional and potential aspects of people’s use of relevant technologies.
They are working with existing communities engaged in reducing energy demand, to understand the range of perspectives and knowledge they embody. Using materials drawn from field trips, workshops, and probes, they will design novel devices and give them to participating communities to test in their own settings. These devices will be unfamiliar, playful, ambiguous but will hopefully expose new possible ways of thinking, doing and feeling in relation to energy consumption. They will visit the participants and study what they have made of the designs. They are also interested to see what sorts of discussions have been sparked off by the designs. To this end, they have also designed this website to encourage exchanges between their participants and between the participants and wider community.
They invite you to visit the website and welcome all contributions whether they be comments on the project, reflections on the website itself, stories about your own experiences with energy reduction projects or technologies, or suggestions of additional resources or contacts. You
can contribute by emailing info@ecdc.ac.uk or by registering as a user and blogging directly into the website.
http://www.ecdc.ac.uk/
