I am a third-year Interaction Design Bachelor Student at Malmö University, Sweden. Last year, during my second year of the program, I had Lizette as my teacher in another course. During this course, she presented the Indigenous Climate Observatories research project for my class. I remember that I was very intrigued and curious to hear more about the project. Lizette and I began talking, which led to me being offered the amazing opportunity of interning for her during the next semester. During my final course during the second year, I did an individual project regarding local climate change and groundwater in Skåne Region, Sweden (read more about it here). This project was supervised by Lizette, and was my first project inspired by the Indigenous Climate Observatories.
When starting the internship in September, I had some hopes and expectations regarding what I would be doing during the internship. I was hoping that I would learn more about the research project and the project researchers, the related research field, participatory design, and use my previous learnings from my bachelor program. Reflecting on my internship experience now at the end, I can happily say that my expectations were met beyond what I could have imagined. I was welcomed with warmth to the research project by the researchers, and I have had so many interesting conversations with them. Apart from being welcomed to the team, I also got to be a part of some exciting projects, like shaping this website, creating a toolbox for the project’s process, creating an digital archive with all the blankets and stamps, among other interesting projects.
To conclude, I feel grateful to have been a part of this project. I would like to thank everyone involved for welcoming me and letting me be a part of the Indigenous Climate Observatories project.
We got another exciting opportunity to present our work at the SANORD conference 2024 in Cape Town. SANORD is the Southern African – Nordic Centre. This conference gave us an excellent opportunity to share what we do with others who are working with similar focus points. In our paper session, we had researchers working with law to support local communities affected by climate change or other ecological emergencies, and health care, who focused on the knowledge of nurses regarding climate change induced illnesses. Of course we talked about our work through the blankets, so our presentation became a bit of a performance.
The Indigenous Climate Observatory project was part of an exhibition and situated action (a kind of workshop where people could try out the methods used in this participatory design work) at the Borneo Cultural Festival 2024 in Sibu, Malaysia. This festival showcases the rich culture of Borneo, through amazing food, crafts and performances. We exhibited the observatory blankets and asked people what local indicators of change they could think of wanted to start paying some extra attention to. Stamps were made for the indicators. While making the stamps we talked about the project and about climate emergencies happening elsewhere and how they had impacted the lives of those who took part in the conversations.
At the Participatory Design Conference 2024 held in Sibu we got an exciting opportunity: We got to introduce the project through the blankets to Indigenous Leaders who were part of the conference. We had deep conversations about the connections between our observations and other places and struggles within other communities. We talked about deeper meanings of the blankets and how they could be used to support transition in how we live with, off and on the earth.
Today was an exciting day! We got to plant the first pepper bark seedling in one of the communities!
Together with local leaders we chose the best spot for this little one: a local school, so that the children at this school can get to learn about the importance of the local trees. We hope that this little one will grow into a strong and caregiving tree, just like the children who water it!
Taking part in this conference with an exhibition was a great opportunity to show the Climate Observatories’ processes of engaging local communities as active members in conservation and biodiversity management efforts. We got to talk with many interesting researchers, to share ideas and to reflect on what such processes could to in safeguarding biodiversity. We also took part with a presentation, given by project member: Meshack N. Dludlu. We were one of the only once talking about flora. Most presentations were about snakes and birds! Exciting (and scary!).
We were part of the Care for Design Research exhibition of Malmö University curated by the fabulous Stina Wessman. It was a joy to present the work that we had done and to hear the stories about how people connect in their own ways to their own local environments. As part of the exhibition, we organised a small workshop were we reflected on what a Climate Observatory here could look like. We shaped our own stamps to make a collective blanket: our local climate observatory.
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.
