Dynamics of sustained co-design in Urban Living Labs

Urban Living Labs (ULLs) are increasingly applied to tackle wicked design challenges in smart cities and smart mobility contexts. A persisting challenge for ULLs in urban contexts is creating engagement and scaling research insights and design findings. Drawing on a case study concerned with the co-design of future mobility services, where private and public sectors collaborated to explore future mobility in two different user communities, the authors explore co-design and scaling dynamics from a participatory infrastructure perspective. Based on the findings, they introduce the concepts of patching and cogitation.

Cogitation is defined as a reflective state, which revolves around the act of embracing co-design methods and logic to address a design challenge. Patching is described as an activity that aids in scaling findings and insights from ULLs to support cogitation within the ULL, and the sustaining of findings into other contexts. The paper argues that the concepts of patching and cogitation can help researchers and practitioners understand the micro-dynamics of engaged co-design and scaling dynamics and provide support when planning, managing, and analysing participatory infrastructures such as ULLs. 

Supporting evidence

The study employs design ethnography, participatory co-design, and qualitative thematic analysis, focusing on understanding the micro-dynamics of sustaining co-design in one specific ULL, the A Human Approach II (AHA II) project. 

The Living Lab organised sustained collaborative activities over two years, including stakeholder workshops, open meetups, transformation games, collaborative design exercises, and ongoing sharing of ethnographic findings. Additional data was collected through stakeholder interviews with city, community, and business representatives, exploring expectations, experiences, and outcomes.  

Key findings

The paper finds that sustaining co-design in ULLs is primarily a social and organisational challenge, as it involves maintaining engagement across diverse stakeholders over long periods. Reaching the state of cogitation to collectively reflect, negotiate, and explore alternative values requires continuous effort and genuine interest, as participants are prone to naturally revert to the dominant logic of their own organisation.  

Additionally, the authors state that patching should be viewed as an extensive “backstage” work that keeps the collaboration alive, rather than something that is limited to workshops or meetings. Tools such as transformation games, regular meetups, and innovative facilitation techniques can become bridges between different organisations, fostering communication and transfer of insights. Furthermore, it is found that the co-design methods themselves are highly valued outputs by the stakeholders involved in the study, as they can be reused for future citizen engagement and to better understand social values. By transferring local citizens’ insights into institutional decision-making and moving knowledge from the Living Lab into partner organisations, the projects and methods employed can be successfully scaled in a wider sense, expanding their scope and reach. 

The authors recommend that ULL practitioners and researchers should treat co-design as an ongoing capability that is an integral part of a project. Investing in patching activities and planning for scaling from the beginning can help use resources more efficiently and maintain engagement high in the long-term. Lastly, the paper emphasises that facilitation should be viewed as critical infrastructure that supports a ULL success, arguing that lasting impact depends less on the innovative solution in itself but more on the sustained collaborative learning process that is part of it.