Shake Energy Collaborative
Designing with, rather than for communities.
As a community energy research fellow at Shake Energy, my team and I had to embark on the entire design thinking process in order to collaborate with a low-income community in Fresno to “co-design” a community solar project that they would feel true emotional and financial ownership over.
Prototyping community solar projects with empathy.
We did user need-finding by researching existing community solar financial models and conducting over 20 phone interviews with members of the community. We also sought out other ways to best reach the community, which led to us creating various graphics and videos to engage through social media. After getting a better sense of the community’s opinions, we took their ideas and concerns into consideration to ideate and prototype equitable physical and financial models that the community would appreciate.
