With the intention of documenting and disseminating the themes, research processes, and main outputs from the Circulate project, we created a series of short movies featured below.
The first, Blockchain and the commons: pros and cons, addresses the challenges and complexities faced when designing digital platforms for resource communities – communities that want to share resources with one another, such as energy collectives, housing coops or shared mobility communities. What are the affordances of distributed ledger technologies as administration and governance tools for commons-based organisations?
The second movie, Ener-geyser: Situated Design in Energy Resources Communities, showcases the Ener-geyser, a public space installation created by researcher-designer, Tara Karpinski, during the Circulate project in collaboration with Amsterdam-based resource community called Schoonschip. The Ener-geyser is a data-driven (floating) fountain that visualises peak times of high demand for energy on Schoonschip’s communal energy smart-grid. By visualising energy levels in real-time, the Geyser helps the community make decisions about when to turn on appliances, in order to achieve their agreed sustainability goals. By looking out the window, one can quickly observe the otherwise invisible state of the smart-grid. Thefore, the fountain questions the format of traditional dashboards, by transforming the dashboard into a collective and public spectacle, for the users and their surroundings.
The third and final movie, Six design dilemmas for when designing digital platforms for resource communities, features six dilemmas to be addressed, while also providing guidelines to be used by designers and communities when setting up digital platforms in an open and collaborative manner. Examples of these dilemmas are privacy vs transparency, social vs economic value, and quantification vs qualification.
Circulate | Blockchain & the commons: pros and cons
Circulate | Ener-geyser: Situated Design in Energy Resources Communities
Circulate | Six design dilemmas for when designing digital platforms for resource communities