Designerly contributions to energy sufficiency – a narrative review and exploration of possibilities

Paper in proceeding, 2024

Adopting a sufficiency approach to energy use seems necessary to justly distribute resources within planetary boundaries. However, sufficiency can be seen as adversarial and a transition to sufficiency is not clearly staked out. Designers and designerly thinking are uniquely posed to address the dialectical space between the world that is and the world that could be (Margolin, 2007), and to make visions of the future more tangible, supporting discussions on preferable futures. Thus, this paper aims to explore how designers can contribute to establishing the required shift towards energy sufficiency.

Based on a narrative literature and design exploration, we outline and illustrate possibilities for designers to contribute. The question of basic human needs is central to Darby & Fawcett’s (2018) definition of energy sufficiency. Design, in particular user-centred design, has long worked with needs, uncovering latent needs and tacit knowledge. This design competence can open new avenues, for example by untangling needs from the material and energy-consuming ways we currently satisfy them with, through innovation of new “need satisfiers”, or through critical design that prompts reflection and debate. Critical design and similar approaches are further useful to address a key shift in societal and personal narratives surrounding energy sufficiency (cf. Tröger & Reese, 2021), e.g. progress vs. contentment, ideas of success, and how fast needs should be satisfied. Designerly competences can also be used to show existing diversity of practices and encourage exploration of them. Finally, design can address systemic aspects by creating innovative wellbeing-enhancing solutions. Such solutions could potentially shift the framing of sufficiency away from voluntary actions that lead to reductions of utility and moral licence for rebound effects (cf. Sorell et al, 2020). In conclusion, we argue that design competences should play important roles in a transition to energy sufficiency.