Intersections of Climate Change and Everyday Cycling
Master of Design Thesis — Research Phase
Problem Space
As a long-time bike commuter in the Seattle area, I have spent a lot of time outdoors. I’ve ridden a bike almost every day for the last 12 years — I’ve never even owned a car! And like many of the people I interviewed in my primary research, I ride a bike for a variety of reasons: to think, to appreciate nature, to get from point a to point b, and to explore; in fact, cycling has heavily influenced my community and my identity over the past 12 years.
However, in recent years, I began to think I was noticing changes in the weather. Was the rain getting harder? Were summers getting hotter? Was there going to be choking smoke from forest fires polluting the air every August from now on? In the back of my mind, I began to wonder . . . is this climate change?
Climate change presents a paradox: while it has transpired, is transpiring and is yet to transpire it often seems intangibly distant. The impacts of climate change are obscured by the natural variability of weather and generational time-scales, however, traces are becoming apparent — the most recent 2018 National Climate Assessment found that predictions made by the 2014 assessment, like increased forest fires, ‘nuisance flooding’ and variable weather, are becoming more frequent realities.
Still, due to the slowness and ambiguity of climate change, there is a tension between the urgent, end-of-days headlines found in major media sources and the experience of day-to-day life where impacts of climate change are hunches at best. In this strange space where lived experience fails to signal the urgency we are asked to subscribe to, speculative technologies could play a critical role in making climate change more approachable, tangible, personal and ‘real’.
According to Don Idhe, a philosopher of technology, technology acts as a mediator of perception — for an example, think of the visual amplification of a telescope or the auditory minimization of noise-canceling headphones. Idhe claims that technology can, “help to determine how reality can be present for and interpreted by people.” In other words, technologies help to shape what counts as ‘real’. One way technology can mediate perception is through speculative design, a design practice that creates artifacts which, as described by James Auger, help imagine possible futures and alternate presents. My goal is to create mediating technologies that help shift people’s perception of climate change in ways that either help a user imagine impacts of climate change in the future, or make climate change and its impacts more visible now.
With this in mind, and using cyclists as a case study due to their latent knowledge of the weather and seasons, I wanted to create speculative tools to tangibly understand climate change for everyday cyclists.
Research
To discover opportunities for design in the intersections of everyday cycling and climate change, I conducted primary and secondary research through personal explorations, theoretical reading, a literature review of related research, expert interviews, semi-structured interviews, and a design research probe.
Over the summer I conducted several rounds of personal inquiry and exploration. This was a jumping-off point for my more structured research in the fall, which helped me realize both the complexity of the ‘art form’ of dressing for riding bikes, the interactions cyclists have with their larger ecologies, and the impact technology could have on my behavior and riding practices.
As a part of conducting secondary research, I constructed this very tiny zine (below) to showcase some of my favorite papers and books that offered theoretical underpinnings for my research. These resources focus on vibrant materialism, the emerging field of energy humanities, early writing on ecosystems and ecologies, post-capitalist economic models inspired by mushroom foraging, queer theory and post-anthropocentric design.
Here’s the zine’s reading list:
Energy Humanities: An Anthology // Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things // The Mushroom at the End of the World // Views of Nature // Design for Collaborative Survival: An Inquiry into Human-Fungi Relationships, // Toxic Progeny: The Pastisphere and Other Queer Futures
I also conducted expert interviews with a member of the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group and an e-textile professor from the DXArts program at the University of Washington.
To learn more about everyday cyclists, I conducted semi-structured interviews. I interviewed 6 cyclists who have commuted 4–7 days a week, for the last 2–15 years. These interviews showed me the poetic and implicit knowledge of the seasons, weather and ecologies cyclists hold as well as how that knowledge drives decisions about their cycling gear and their routes. I also learned that while cyclists are deeply sad about climate change (except one who thought it was a conspiracy) they couldn’t confidently pinpoint its manifestations in their day to day lives.
To dive deeper into people’s relationship to their gear, routes and concerns about climate change, I created a design research probe. Design research probes were pioneered by William Gaver, Tony Dunne and Elena Pacenti as a way to elicit creative, imaginative responses through playful activities that allow for open-ended responses. I chose to use a probe because my work is speculative in nature and asks that cyclists apply their everyday experiences to imagined futures. These probes were designed to partially continue descriptive research and to partially inspire creative and speculative design outcomes.
Research Probe
The probe had three activities and was accompanied by a small pamphlet of facts about climate change. The following are descriptions of each part of the probe accompanied by a photograph.
My Route By Season
In this guided activity, I asked participants to draw their normal, everyday commute on a map of Seattle. I also asked about alternate routes based on seasons and weather, notable animals and plants they encounter, and routes they ride for fun. This activity allowed relationships between geography, ecology, seasons and weather to emerge.
Gabbing Gear
In this booklet, I printed and attached 2”x3” sticker-photos of a participant’s gear next to a spread of speech bubbles. Two of the bubbles asked what the gear would say about the weather today and two asked what the gear thought about climate change. This activity helped connections between weather, gear and speculations about climate change to form.
Strange Sensors
Participants were given three ‘magical’ sensors with the ability to sense previously impossible aspects of climate change. The sensors were made of craft foam so participants could touch and play with them to begin to imagine tangible interactions. This activity allowed participants to creatively express questions about climate change outside of the bounds of pragmatism.
Findings & Opportunities
After many iterations, sticky notes, and mind maps, I found patterns in my research worth mentioning. I broke my findings into three categories: ways of knowing weather and behaving in response, concerns about climate change, and critical themes surrounding climate change. I then combined concerns with themes to explore opportunities for speculative design.
Ways of Knowing & Behaving
Ways of Knowing Weather and Seasons
Analog Methods: Participants have deep imbrication with the seasons and weather which they experience in pragmatic and poetic ways. Participants mentioned trails sprinkled with pollen or cherry blossoms in the spring, covered in black ice and fallen leaves in early winter and visited by rabbits in the summer. Smells change by season as well, like lilacs in spring, blackberries in the summer, or the “moldy fresh” air of fall. Cyclists use visual cues like at light beams at night to assess the intensity of falling rain and trees and flags to read wind direction and intensity. Cyclists described ‘feeling’ as a way of knowing as well, mentioning dehumidified air, the first warm day of spring or simply holding a hand out a window before leaving home.
Digital Methods: Most all cyclists use phone apps to track the weather, but there was a correlation between where the longer the ride, the more apps a cyclist used. However, almost all cyclists reported using air quality apps to track air quality during summer months when smoke from wildfires severely compromised Seattle’s air quality.
Ways of Behaving in Response
The major outcome of understanding the seasons and weather is that it influences what cyclists wear and where they ride. Cyclists adjust their gear seasonally and daily, packing more gear in winter and less in summer (but then worrying about sun exposure and heat). Routes change seasonally as well: during the My Route By Season activity, most cyclists mentioned having a wet weather route and a dry weather route, and some have routes for different seasons — riding closer to bus lines in winter and away from windy waterfronts in springtime.
Cyclists’ Main Concerns About Climate Change
- Cyclists are concerned about the increasing complexity of riding a bike due to extreme and variable weather.
Especially in the Gabbing Gear exercise, it became obvious that cyclists were concerned with the increasing complexity of riding in weather that might become hotter, more extreme with harder precipitation. - Cyclists are worried about worsening air quality
Participant showed a strong interest in air quality, both through a variety of responses to Strange Sensors as well as their almost unanimous use of air quality apps to track air quality related to forest fires. - Cyclists are worried about the degradation of their gear and bike parts due to harsher weather.
Cyclists expressed concern about their gear degrading in Gabbing Gear and interest in tracking degrading bike parts it in Strange Sensors.
Overarching Themes Relating to Climate Change
- Limits of sensing: climate change has transpired, is transpiring and is yet to fully transpire
One of the difficulties in communicating the impacts of climate change is the generational time scale in which the impacts of climate change unfolds. However, climate change is to some extent, irreversible, it will happen, it is happening, and the acceleration of the impact is projected and expected. - Ambiguous and Complex Local/Personal Observations of Climate Change vs. Sweeping Global Narratives
There is a tension between the way participants reacted to the concept of climate change and their description of climate change in their daily lives. For example, when asked how they feel about climate change, participants generally viewed it as a tragedy. However, when asked if they have noticed trends in local weather that they would attribute to climate change, people responded with uncertainty: “I’d like to say. I think so, yeah. Nothing so drastic that I can put my finger on it”. While many participants eventually admitted to having hunches about weather trends and climate change, their descriptions weren’t necessarily negative! It was ambiguous whether hotter summers would be good or bad (some people reported disliking heat, others seemed to think they would ride more) and some thought more variable weather created beautiful and interesting riding conditions like double rainbows and sun-breaks. - Cyclists experience ‘one with it all’ style connections to ecology
While cycling is an everyday activity, at times mundane, participants reported occasionally being struck by moments of wonder and connection to the larger environment (riding alongside low-flying ducks and getting caught in strong storms). In addition, cyclists noticed a great deal of plant and animals while riding like geese, rabbits, crows and gnats, as well as blooming flowers, emerging/falling leaves, and scents of lilac, jasmine and fennel, to name a few. Cyclists also care about the health of local ecologies, in his Strange Sensor response, one participant wanted to sense the health of nearby plants.
Opportunities
Weird Gear for Wild Weather:
Opportunity to reflect the varied and ambiguous/amoral outcomes of climate change in ways that address cyclist’s concerns about increasingly complex cycling practices. For example, maybe a mechatronic jacket designed to change shape for different types of weather starts to have anxiety.
Symbolic Decay & Material Histories
Opportunity to make generational time-frames tangible through material traces or symbolic decay. Could outerwear weather in a way that visualizes the impact of climate change over time? Or can gear reflect a history of use, repair or decay specific to climate change?
Air Quality & Post-Anthropocentrism
Opportunity to explore intersections of air quality and human-non-human interactions. Perhaps a design explores a diegetic prototype from a future where a counter-culture group of cyclists conduct street-level sensing to seek out ‘good air’ oases which they protect and cultivate.
Personal Reflection
Looking back on this quarter, these are the few things I thought were valuable lessons.
- Move forward despite ambiguity.
Mentally, I can be a detail-oriented person to the point where I poke holes in every idea I have and get frozen. This quarter, with the help of my thesis chair, I practiced making decisions and moving forward despite uncertainty and ambiguity. - Research isn’t finding a solution, it’s finding a place for a solution.
It took a while to be comfortable just sitting back and asking questions! At the beginning of the research phase, I was thinking too far ahead in the design process and trying to find solutions before I had gotten far enough in my research. My quarter was more relaxed and fruitful once I realized not knowing was a natural part of beginning to know what I could eventually design. - Synthesis is hard.
I worked very hard on synthesis, but only after I wasn’t working hard on it, and wondered why insights and opportunities weren’t magically coming together. I panic texted my good friend (also a designer) who reminded me that coming up with insights and opportunities is just as iterative and imperfect as any other part of the design process. This gave me permission to work hard and have bad ideas, which eventually led to better ones. - Print design requires time.
I really wanted to make a probe but little did I know how much work it would take to make. Not only did I sketch, paper prototype and refine every part of it, once I had it finalized, I almost had a nervous breakdown in Office Depot at least two times trying to print large-format maps and I spent a long Friday night hand cutting and assembling all the pieces. As someone with a web design background, this was a real lesson in the nature of making something printed — it takes effort and time. Creating a poster for our poster show was a similar process. Printing and cutting and experiencing something on a wall or in your hand is such a different process and feeling than creating for a screen. I was humbled. - Grad school is awesome.
Even though it is hard work, I try to remember to be grateful for the opportunity to work on projects I am passionate about with talented and smart people supporting me ❤ It’s rad.