A Year in Energy: Imagining Energy Community Participation with a Collaborative Design Fiction

Citizens are increasingly envisioned as active participants in sustainable transitions. One vision imagines digital civics as energy communities wherein local actors collectively produce and consume renewable energy. As energy communities are an emergent sociotechnical phenomenon, HCI is in a great position to understand and shape potential dilemmas that may influence citizens’ digitally supported participation. This paper presents the collaborative design fiction A Year in Energy to engage people in imagining communal energy futures. Inspired by Participatory Design, A Year in Energy combines design fiction’s storytelling with hybrid digital board game elements to manifest visions of energy community participation. We conducted three board game workshops, where participants reflected on sociotechnical scenarios and actions. Our analysis identified four dilemmas of participation describing participants’ reflections on imagining communal energy. We contribute knowledge on dilemmas of energy community participation and considerations for using collaborative design fiction to foster the imagination of digital civics participation.