A series of weaknesses in creativity, research design, and quality of writing continue to handicap energy social science. Many studies ask uninteresting research questions, make only marginal contributions, and lack innovative methods or application to theory. Many studies also have no explicit research design, lack rigor, or suffer from mangled structure and poor quality of writing. To help remedy these shortcomings, this Review offers suggestions for how to construct research questions; thoughtfully engage with concepts; state objectives; and appropriately select research methods. Then, the Review offers suggestions for enhancing theoretical, methodological, and empirical novelty. In terms of rigor, codes of practice are presented across seven method categories: experiments, literature reviews, data collection, data analysis, quantitative energy modeling, qualitative analysis, and case studies. We also recommend that researchers beware of hierarchies of evidence utilized in some disciplines, and that researchers place more emphasis on balance and appropriateness in research design. In terms of style, we offer tips regarding macro and microstructure and analysis, as well as coherent writing. Our hope is that this Review will inspire more interesting, robust, multi-method, comparative, interdisciplinary and impactful research that will accelerate the contribution that energy social science can make to both theory and practice.

Promoting novelty, rigor, and style in energy social science: towards codes of practice for appropriate methods and research design

How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology:

Energy and climate change research has been dominated by particular methods and approaches to defining and addressing problems, accomplished by gathering and analysing the corresponding forms of evidence. This special issue starts from the broad concepts of stories, narratives, and storytelling to go beyond these analytic conventions, approaching the intersection of nature, humanity, and technology in multiple ways, using lenses from social sciences, humanities, and practitioners’ perspectives. The contributors use stories as data objects to gather, analyse, and critique; stories as an approach to research an inquiry; narrative analysis as a way of crystallising arguments and assumptions; and storytelling as a way of understanding, communicating, and influencing others. In using these forms of evidence and communication, and applying methods, analytical stances, and interpretations that these invite, something new and different results. This essay is a brief introduction to how, in our view, stories and their kin fit in energy and climate change research. We outline the diversity of data, approaches, and goals represented in the contributions to the special issue. And we reflect on some of the challenges of, and possibilities for, continuing to develop ‘stories’ as data sources, as modes of inquiry, and as creative paths toward social engagement.

https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=usp_fac

Using stories, narratives, and storytelling in energy and climate change research

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Digitalisation of agricultural knowledge and advice networks: A state-of-the-art review

In this paper we explore how design fiction -- an increasingly common and relevant strategy within HCI and the Digital Humanities -- can be used to get purchase on the future. In particular, we address how design fictional methods allow researchers to construct arguments about feared or dystopian futures within the context of collapse informatics. Fiction, as a research tool, allows us to do several important things with proximal futures: it allows us to adopt a range of different intellectual commitments and values about the future and explore the consequences of those commitments; it allows us to articulate these consequences to a broader public in a format that is more readily consumed and understood than a research paper; and it allows us to insulate ourselves from the emotional consequences of perceived proximal dystopias by creating space to "play with" and explore alternative visions of the future. We argue that paying attention to how popular culture represents scenarios of collapse can provide insight into how to express and communicate the challenges and potential solutions framed by the LIMITS community to a broad public audience.

The limits of our imagination: design fiction as a strategy for engaging with dystopian futures

Research is often inspired by visions of the future. These visions can take on various narrative forms, and can fall anywhere along the spectrum from utopian to dystopian. Even though we recognize the importance of such visions to help us shape research questions and inspire rich design spaces to be explored, the opportunity to discuss them is rarely given in a research context. Imagine how civilization will have changed in 15 years. What is your vision for systems that will be supporting sustainability in that time Which transformational changes will have occurred in the mean time that allow for these systems Is ICT even the right tool or does it contradict sustainability by making our world ever more complex How can we make systems and our societies more sustainable and resilient by ICT4S This paper presents a compilation of fictional abstracts for inspiration and discussion, and provides means to stimulate discussion on future research and contributes to ICT4S community building.

https://www.cs.le.ac.uk/people/rc256/2014_ICT4S-2029_pubished.pdf

ICT4S 2029: What will be the systems supporting sustainability in 15 years

Most research in computing and information science reinforces the premise that information and communications technology (ICT) can be productively applied even more broadly than it is at present. A recent thread of research in sustainable HCI, however, has focused on the possibility that there are many situations where less ICT, not more, may be desirable. We envision an adaptation of this premise, where the goal is not just to consciously omit or remove ICT systems, but rather to create systems explicitly designed to make themselves superfluous through their use. Such a system—one in which the successful operation of the system in the short term renders it superfluous in the long term—could be called a “selfobviating system”. We present a case study in the sustainable food domain for a context in which selfobviating systems could be useful, and a typology of self-obviating systems that could be relevant to other domains. Self-obviating systems could be an important part of a sustainable future, and could be applied more broadly in ICT design.

Self-Obviating Systems and their Application to Sustainability

There is unequivocal evidence that we are facing the greatest energy transition since the dawn of the industrial age. We need to urgently shift from a global fossil fuel and CO 2 -emitting energy system to 1) decrease our CO 2 emissions and combat the effects of climate change and 2) face a future of depleting fossil fuel resources. Yet there is still a lack of collective action to start taking effective measures to meet these challenges. We argue that there is a need for narratives in general and for a special type of narrative in particular, allohistorical scenarios , that act as thought experiments whose main function is to defamiliarize us with what is taken for granted. Such scenarios invite us to explore plausible parallel paths, thereby making it possible to imagine futures that are essentially different from the path-dependence of an unyielding historical past. Such futures enable us to grapple with a present that is saturated by the inertia of past decisions and the sunken costs of existing infrastructure. We here present the design rationale for the Coalworld scenario: an alternative world where only half the oil ever existed. We also describe the methodology and the assumptions that underlie the Coalworld scenario.

What if there had only been half the oil? Rewriting history to envision the consequences of peak oil

In this forum we highlight innovative thought, design, and research in the area of interaction design and sustainability, illustrating the diversity of approaches across HCI communities. --- Lisa Nathan and Samuel Mann, Editors

Marcel Pufal

Papers

The limits of our imagination: design fiction as a strategy for engaging with dystopian futures

ICT4S 2029: What will be the systems supporting sustainability in 15 years

Self-Obviating Systems and their Application to Sustainability

What if there had only been half the oil? Rewriting history to envision the consequences of peak oil

Furious futures and apocalyptic design fictions: popular narratives of sustainability