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Low-effort design
As a designer of serious games, Renger is familiar with low-threshold applications that raise awareness, transfer knowledge, and collect knowledge from their users. ‘With low-effort design, you can create the conditions in which transformation occurs’, he explains. ‘I do not design solutions, but the processes that can lead to eventual solutions.’ In the master Crossover Creativity, the course he is directing at HKU, they call this participatory designing. 'The designer serves as the director of a transitional challenge brought about by others. It’s no easy task, to change, especially if the urgency is not directly felt by those who are meant to do it. So how to handle that?'Innovative participation
As example, Renger explains the citizen participation project that he directed at Utrecht’s district Kanaleneiland. Here, the housing corporation Bo-Ex is renovating twelve flats, with a total of 644 social housing units. The goal is to transform them into energy-neutral homes, but to do so, the corporation must get legal permission from at least 70 percent of the residents. By taking the traditional paths of participation, they failed to reach this percentage with the first flat, even though the renovation would cost the residents nothing. To get across this hurdle, the HKU team designed a new participation process for the second flat. ‘Simply sending a letter to residents and inviting them for a meeting in a hall won’t do it’, Renger says. ‘Do you think people in this neighbourhood are excited about solar panels? They have much larger problems to deal with over here.’
Smart meter
The team came up with a whole action package, where residents had nothing more to do than simply open the door for a visitor who would personally guide them through the process. The idea was to start with the installation of a smart meter, to do a baseline measurement that revealed how much saving was possible. “The local government wanted to send a letter, but a majority of residents in Kanaleneiland is not even able to read that. And the things you must do give permission for such a meter is usually a monstrous process.’ The procedure was redesigned in twenty steps, in which the predictable drop-out moments were anticipated. All the households were personally visited by someone who sat at the table to talk about all the boxes that had to be ticked for the meter and plan the installation. This resulted in enough meters for the baseline measurement, which laid the basis for the next step.Hands on the buttons
Another part of the action package was the transformation of a VR application, planned by the housing corporation, into a Mixed Reality Experience. A model home, where residents could see the renewed situation, made the VR experience unnecessary. With the Innovation Studio’s design team, Renger designed a new experience for a broader target group: a physical maquette of an apartment with a controllable projection of a fictitious resident spending the day there. It presented a tangible object where you could get your hands on the button, to see the effects of solar panels, double glass windows and energy-conscious behaviour on your monthly housing costs.
Illuminated zebra crossing
This was just one of the tests to show the inhabitants that they could actually make a difference. No participation in the usual style, which often gives citizens the feeling that their input does not matter. Instead, a team of trainees from the municipality collected the personal preferences in the neighbourhood, to see with the consortium how they could respond to it. For example, residents in the Colombuslaan street, received an illuminated zebra crossing at a dangerous junction, completely at their own request. Not at the initiative of the local government for once, but initiated by the people themselves. With respect to the smart meter, people were not really that enthusiastic, but they certainly were about the zebra crossing. Eventually they got both, and as final piece, the required number of votes for the energy-neutral renovation was reached for the subsequent buildings.
Unravelling stories
However, so far it remains difficult to duplicate these success stories from Utrecht in the follower cities. ‘That’s no surprise’, Renger says, ‘because the context of Utrecht is wholly different from Focsani in Romania, for example.’ He tells the story of an entrepreneur from Lombok, who started experimenting on his own with a bidirectional charging station. This would enable electrical cars to store the surplus of solar energy and feed it back to the grid. A chance encounter with a civil servant at a reception eventually caused the local government to switch to these bidirectional charging stations. A great success, but how should this benefit the people in Focsani, where there are no charging stations? ‘That’s why we are now unravelling these stories for the general manager of all the lighthouse cities. We are studying the underlying factors that determine success; the roles everyone is playing in it, as well as the key moments. The trick is to put everyone who has a valuable role in the right place at the right time in a project. Many people fail to see this as part of the design, but it surely is: the designer as the boundary spanner and process prompter.”