Two design thinking workshops were held within the municipalities of Bergen and Oslo. The workshops were conducted in alignment with a design process; with idea generating tasks followed by structuring phases.
The purpose was to amend, clarify and narrow down the 5 hot spots for planning tool development that the involved stakeholders perceived would improve the planning of smart energy communities (SECs).
In both workshops, participants were divided into groups of 6-8 people consising of city planners, private sector/utility companies, architects, researchers and politicians.
Of idea generating activities I applied case based reasoning/storytelling for sharing and analysis of experience, ‘what if’ to inspire scenario building together with brain writing.
During these two first processes, the city planners expressed a deep interest in the essence of what they saw as important for the future communities of their citizens. It contributed to an understanding within the group of each person’s starting point and value, which percisted through the workshop.
Of structuring tools I applied back casting ladders. As is common, this process of selecting a goal and moving towards it, inspired discussion on challenges which became useful for further analysis of key issues relevant for the creation of a toolbox for smart energy community planning.
Finally, a tailored version of personas was presented, where the participants were asked to put earlier tool recommnedation into different ‘suitcases’ which I had designed: ‘Smart city planner 2030’, ‘Smart Citizen 2030’ and ‘Smart Utility 2030’. The results of this task showed that the stakeholders had very clear ideas of which tools could assist their work, and that the participants agreed more on the possible solutions than what had emerged through interviews. It also made it possible to distinguish between already existing strategies, possible incentives and obstacles to holistic community planning.
These full day workshops generated hours and hours of recorded discussions that are currently being analyzed, and tomorrow the research group will conduct a slower paced structuring workshop to align our interpretations of findings from each municipality. In combination with a large tool review, this will result in a preliminary toolbox for smart energy community planning; PI-SEC by NTNU/SINTEF.
Design Thinking 