Between September 2024 and January 2025, Agnes Elfvingsson, an Interaction Design bachelor’s student from Malmö University, interned under Lizette Reitsma on the Indigenous Climate Observatories project. One of Agnes’s main tasks was to create a model to illustrate the project’s overall process. You can read more about the project and the steps involved under the About section of this webpage, which details how the Indigenous Climate Observatories were developed. For specific insights into the processes at each project location—Eswatini, Lesotho, and Malaysia—see the sections for those locations.
While working on visualizing the project’s process, Lizette and Agnes came up with the idea of creating a “toolbox” designed to guide others interested in creating their own climate observatory or reflecting on similar projects. The toolbox provides a step-by-step approach to planning the process of creating a climate observatory.
This Toolbox is meant to be a tool to reflect on the process and steps when creating an observatory, and does not specifically go into detail on how to create an observatory.
The toolbox is available as a downloadable file, which you can view on your screen or print out, as shown in the main image. If using it on a screen, be sure to have paper, fabric, or other materials for notes, along with a pen and scissors to engage fully with the activities in the toolbox.
Two files are available for download below: one contains the complete toolbox, and the other includes a separate, larger-scale model of the project process and its steps, ideal for printing in A4, A3, or larger formats.
Interaction Design Bachelor Student, Malmö University
Project during the course Studio 2, spring semester 2024
“Your percentages killed us” (they laughed)
Indigenous-Inspired Almanac against Climate Change
The project of the Indigenous-Inspired Almanac is a tribute to the local knowledge collected under the project of the Indigenous Climate Observatories, as well, as an attempt to utilize it to help them adapt to the changing climate. It proposes an almanac that tracks the soil humidity to visualize the ever-changing trends in the seasons. Why soil moisture? From the collection of observations from previous sessions, I chose to work with the one that suggested that soil moisture around water sources increases before it rains.
Why is it important? As one of the participants of the workshops held by Lizette said, they used to have a specific time to saw the seeds and to plough. But now, due to climate change, the seasons are shifting in an unpredictable way. If they saw the seeds but it doesn’t rain or if it rains too much, they might lose all their harvest for the whole year. Thus, timing has become more crucial than ever. The almanac aims to visualize the increase of soil moisture to indicate the potential of coming rain.
Why the shape? The Indigenous-Inspired Almanac aspires to communicate the data in an organic way. People in the rural don’t have a high digital literacy, thus, the wooden disk aims to use familiar materials. It uses dark brown paint to paint the daily data (it paints a brown line reaching as far from the center as humid the soil is). Over the span of one year, it creates a graph of the soil humidity fluctuation. The reason behind this visualization is that one way to check the soil humidity is by touching the soil. However, another method described by locals is looking at the “water rings” around the water sources. The more humid the soil is, the further it reaches from the water level. This is what the visualization is inspired by.
This project is not meant to fix climate change in one shot. It is meant to show a possible application of the rich Indigenous knowledge often overlooked or underestimated by scientists .
It is meant to help the people who have contributed to climate warming the least, yet are the most affected by it on a daily basis adapt to the changes outside of their control. And it is meant as an appreciation (and hopefully a contribution) for Lizette’s work in leading the Indigenous Climate Observatories who shared all her knowledge about the communities, for Charles from the Lesotho Meteorological Services who was always eager to help me out on the meteorological explanations and for the Indigenous communities who participated in Lizette’s workshops sharing their invaluable knowledge and struggles.
Agnes Elfvingsson
Interaction Design Bachelor Student, Malmö University
Project during the course Studio 2, spring semester 2024
This student-project was not created as a part of the Indigenous Climate Observatories project, but was inspired by the idea of listening to local perspectives, knowledge and voices regarding climate change-impacts to be able to act and adapt. The project idea was introduced to me by Lizette Reitsma, and her help and guidance during the project was very supportive and inspiring.
Amplifying Voices: Groundwater
Facilitating Dialogue Across Skåne, Sweden’s Communities
The Groundwater Toolbox and Digital Forum – A physical and digital design exploration to facilitate public interdisciplinary dialogue, adaptation, and collaboration, aimed at cultivating a public discussion and culture of groundwater stewardship in the Skåne Region, Sweden.
An image of the design exploration
The Phenomenon
Climate change and over-extraction reshape Skåne Region’s groundwater dynamics. My research started with identifying implications for diverse local contexts and viewing groundwater as a “multiple object”, which was interpreted for this project as groundwater having different meanings for different contexts. Semi-structured interviews and meetings were held with stakeholders in different local contexts, for example, a farmer, a professor, environmental science students, and an employee in the Skåne County Board. The intention of these meetings was to hear their experiences and perspectives on the changes in groundwater and what that meant for them.
Identifying key insights, ideating, prototyping and testing
After the meetings, ideation sessions were performed by identifying insights from the conversations and then filtering the insights to key insights. The purpose of this activity was to find potential opportunities for design explorations based on the topics that were brought up during the conversations. The ideation sessions led to building a first prototype of a design toolbox and a digital forum, which was then introduced and tested with stakeholders.
The idea of the toolbox prototype was to collectively make commitments on actions and adaptations to change the current treatment of groundwater in Skåne Region. The topics for making actions and adaptations were for example on how to recycle the groundwater and regarding how to collaborate with others to change the current usage of groundwater. If a commitment was made, you would put a marble in the center of the round cardboard-piece, where the marbles are placed in the photo below.
The first prototype of a toolbox
The digital forum had the intention of communicating with others regarding groundwater across contexts and sharing the commitments that were made using the toolbox. The intention of the digital forum was also to learn more about the groundwater and how it is affected by current usage and climate change.
The design was then iterated on based on the stakeholders’ inputs during the prototype testing, and a design exploration was proposed consisting of two parts, a toolbox for a physical presence, combined with an online forum for digital presence.
A Mockup of the digital forum created in FigmaAn illustration of the toolbox created using Adobe Illustrator
Physical presence
The toolbox facilitates group dialogue to collectively establish groundwater commitments on recycling, changing habits, communicating, and collaborating. With the purpose of accountability, action and adaptation.
Digital presence
Paired with toolbox, the digital forum intends to facilitate engagement across contexts, to mediate charged groundwater debates. To find ways together to change the current treatment of groundwater in Skåne Region, Sweden.
