1. Facilitating the Growth of Prosumer Communities
Providing an online app-store to support the decision processes of local energy communities
Challenges for prosumer communities
Ambitious goals: realising local sustainable energy provision
Working with (mainly) volunteers
Complexity of the energy sector: legal, financial, technological, organisational
Lack of information and expertise in own ranks
PROBLEM
STATEMENT
Design Science Research approach
The Design Science Research approach was chosen, because we seek to understand the real-life phenomena of prosumer communities, identify practical problems and related requirements, and design explicitly applicable solutions introducing appropriate artefacts that can serve prosumer communities (Hevner et al., 2010).
LITERATURE
EXPLORATION
Observation:
Struggle of prosumer
communities
ANALYSIS
Exploratory study:
Case studies
Group sessions
Interviews
=> Indicative empirical evidence
Perspectives:
People
Process
Technology
=> Generic
view
Generic understanding of design problem
=> Requirements
DESIGN
IMPLEMENTATION
EVALUATION
Research Question:
How to facilitate
decision enhancement
along growth path?
Prescriptive
conceptual model*
Prescriptive
empirical model*
Descriptive
conceptual model*
Descriptive
empirical model*
Global
issues
* Inductive-hypothetic research strategy (Sol, 1982)
LENS
Exploratory study
In the exploration phase, case studies of four Dutch prosumer communities were performed, next to group panel sessions with prosumer community participants. Furthermore, 46 stakeholders from the prosumer community value network were interviewed. The analysis of the exploratory study provided a list of requirements for the design phase.
Case studies
Group panel sessions
Stakeholder interviews
Design & implementation
The shopping mall metaphor covers the service concept of providing information, tools and services to prosumer communities that enhance their decision processes along the various phases of their growth path. The shopping mall prototype is implemented as an on-line app store, providing stepwise guidance and recommendations, based on the customer’s profile.
Evaluation
The prosumer community shopping mall prototype was used to evaluate the usefulness and usability of the designed artefact:
3 group evaluation sessions with prosumer communities
8 individual sessions with energy experts.
The evaluation results indicate that the shopping mall is useful and usable for enhancing prosumer communities in making decisions in the various phases of their growth path.
PhD. Researcher:
Wim Timmerman MSc.
The shopping mall artefact facilitates the growth path of prosumer communities, providing guidance in making decisions, and relieves prosumer communities.
The large collection of services in one place that are continuously updated, and the guidance provided in making decisions, were highly valuated.
The role of the shopping mall facilitator was considered crucial. It should be an independent and trustworthy party.
Theory formulation on decision enhancement and the shopping mall as design artefact were added as scientific contributions to the knowledge base. The practical applicability of the shopping mall provides the societal contribution.
Currently, Wim is researcher at the Hanze University of Groningen, doing his PhD research at the University of Groningen. He is also teacher at the department Industrial Product Design at the Hanze. Wim holds a MSc degree Computer Science from Twente University. Previously Wim worked at KPN Research and TNO