This article explores how engagement with tangible design artefacts can invite, and sustain focus on, the different professional perspectives that emerge in multistakeholder workshops. Multiple interests and intentions can pose challenges, especially in the initial phases of collaborative work. Existing design research emphasises the use of tangible artefacts as mediators for collaboration, but limited attention has been given to how they could be used to expose tensions and opposing perspectives as a way to enable movement beyond stuck conversation among stakeholders. We examine the design and use of two tangible artefacts for multi-stakeholder collaborative inquiry, demonstrating how interaction with them can encourage open and active confrontation of underlying and contradictory stakeholder interests and intentions. Since unspoken conflicts can undermine the early stages of collaborative inquiry, we propose that the use of tangible artefacts to explore taken-for-granted assumptions is crucial if stakeholders are to negotiate perspectives and co-create new meaning.
Intermittent energy resources challenge the ways in which the existing energy system operates. Studies suggest that residential buildings can provide a flexibility service for district heating (DH) systems. This technique involves load shifting by heating buildings to higher temperatures at times when energy is more readily available, thus diminishing heating needs at times of peak demand or when energy is scarce. Based on three Future Workshops (FWs) where DH professionals and other relevant DH stakeholders participated and discussed this topic, this paper reports on the extent to which these actors see energy flexibility as a realistic future development, and on what they see as key potentials and challenges in that regard. Preliminary results indicate that the mix of the actors and the specific local context greatly influence how this topic is understood, emphasizing the importance of including local context in investigations of energy flexibility. FW participants included representatives from DH companies, municipalities, building associations, technology developers, etc. The FWs were conducted at three different localities of Denmark: Copenhagen, Aalborg and Sønderborg, i.e. the national capital, a regional capital and a smaller city, respectively.
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