This study explores how a community-driven design approach can address human flourishing in the context of mobility. Drawing on design ethnography and co-design in two Swedish urban areas, the study surfaces alternative design ideas rooted in everyday life and community values. The research contributes to design for social sustainability by illustrating how place-based, participatory processes can make room for local narratives and values, offering a pathway for embedding wellbeing into the design process.

This paper demonstrates the value of design ethnography in multi-stakeholder intelligent mobility systemsinnovation and presents a methodology developed through collaborative projects over ten years. In detailedexamples of the development of self-driving cars, Mobility-as-a-Service and connected multi-modalmobility solutions, it shows how ethnographic friction reframes assumptions, fosters co-design, and supportsparticipatory forms of futures-making. We argue that the value of design ethnography lies not in solvingpredefined problems, but in its pedagogical approach to enable deep scaling – the transformation ofinstitutional logics, stakeholder relations, and future imaginaries over time. We propose a framework forapplied ethnography that we call “patching” – that includes tailoring methods, anchoring voices, reframingperspectives and scaling human approaches in an iterative and participatory process.

Living Labs (LLs) are collaborative spaces where stakeholders are offered the opportunity to address relevant challenges. In the context of city logistics, LLs promote knowledge exchange, innovation, and learning among stakeholders, while also focusing on understanding how different UFT solutions are perceived by stakeholders, and how these perceptions influence solution adoption. In this direction, the aim of this study is twofold; first to provide a framework for establishing city logistics LLs, and second, to validate this framework via showcasing the challenges and barriers of LLs of different size, purpose and scope, to elicit requirements and foster the actual implementation of the envisaged solutions and their scale up. The research contributes to the advancement of sustainable urban logistics practices to enhance the efficiency, sustainability, and resilience of Urban Freight Transport (UFT) systems. © The Author(s) 2025

Living Labs are collaborative, real-world environments for co-creating sustainable innovations that rely on trust-based engagement with local communities. However, while many studies emphasise scaling up or out of such innovations, the potential for achieving qualitative transformations in relation to local values (“scaling deep”) remains underexplored. In response, we adopted a design ethnographic approach that blended immersive, reflexive ethnographic methods with the participatory co-design characteristics of Living Labs. This approach involved closely partnering with a local community champion through participant observation and co-creation workshops embedded in the community’s daily life. Our findings show that community champions acted as co-creators and mediators, building trust and aligning Living Lab activities with local values through a relational ethic of care. By immersing the research team in day-to-day community life via shared activities and open dialogue, champions enabled situated learning about local needs, thereby facilitating “scaling deep” through mutual trust and understanding. Overall, the study demonstrates that scaling deep in Living Labs hinges on embodied researcher–community partnerships in mutual care and shared responsibility. The study contributes to the Living Lab literature by illustrating how community champions can bridge understanding about sustainable transformations through relational engagement. © 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

As mobility systems evolve, their design must enable people to adapt to disruptions in their daily lives and routines, making social resilience a vital yet underexplored focus. This is why this study investigates the question: What are the challenges when designing for social resilience in local mobility services? Semi-structured interviews with seven mobility experts revealed the need for a shift from prioritising organizational resources to enhancing social capacity, emphasising individuals’ strengths and established routines. The main challenges for urban planners and developers to achieve this were identified through a lack of guidelines for incorporating social sustainability into mobility planning, that in turn renders difficulties in employing qualitative methods tailored for enabling citizen and stakeholder engagement, as well as developing deeper understandings of local, social life. These findings are illustrated in this article through five design implications, each highlighting strategies to integrate social resilience into mobility systems, ensuring they are responsive and supportive of the communities they serve. © 2025 The Author(s)

The recent explosion in artificial intelligence and its integration into more and more domains beyond traditional ones such as health care, insurance, and defence show no signs of slowing down. Generative AI is becoming part and parcel of an increasing number of designerly activities as either a tool—for example in the form of the Large Language Generative Models that enable the creation of text, images, videos, or mock-ups via chatbot-like interfaces—or a material—for example when creating the interfaces that others will use to interact with such models. Rapid adoption and low AI literacy among designers’ limits awareness of limitations, challenges, opportunities, and consequences deriving from the use of AI-enabled products and services. The paper introduces the concept of Design Literacy for AI as distinct from AI Literacy and Design Literacy, and proposes a design-centred taxonomy of Generative AI products and services. The taxonomy is operationalised into a proof-of-concept web service using faceted classification to help designers better understand AI as both a tool and a material, further investigate the concept of Design Literacy for AI, and contribute to reducing the gap between AI development and design practices. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.

This paper explores the role of toolkits and their material characteristics as a vehicle for generating impact through sustaining insights and ways of working from Living Labs. Using toolkits to sustain findings within Living Labs is not new, but literature concerning their characteristics and expectations by Living Lab actors is scarce. The paper outlines the primary role toolkits play concerning co-learning in Living Labs, how they can be designed through a reflective design ethnographic practice and highlights essential characteristics of toolkits when used to sustain findings into other contexts. This is done by reflecting on the design of two different toolkits focused on the design of future smart mobility services from a facilitator perspective, as well as interviewing stakeholders from the public and private sectors regarding their expectations of the role and characteristics of said toolkits.  

Urban Living Labs (ULL) is 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 scale 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, we explore co-design and scaling dynamics on the micro-level from a participatory infrastructure perspective. Based on the findings, we 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. We argue 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. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Human approaches to the future of urban mobility in everyday contexts are urgently required if we are to develop sustainable human futures in mobility. A requirement in meeting this challenge will be transdisciplinary and long-term engagement with a broad range of stakeholders and communities, in order to negotiate and align opportunities, values, and desires for social change (Fors et al., 2022). In this chapter we argue that we can address this challenge by applying participatory human approaches that place the values, everyday practices, and environments of people at the centre of design. The chapter presents the development of a participatory and design anthropological methodology for future urban mobility through a project involving sustained engagement with industry, municipalities, and local communities in Sweden. Based on two consecutive projects grounded in two contrasting suburban areas in Sweden and involving long-term, iterative multi-stakeholder collaborations, the chapter provides a transferable methodology for developing automated future mobility in diverse contexts, communities, and environments, through socially sustainable transformation. © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

This paper investigates elements of trust in autonomous vehicles (AVs). We contex- tualised autonomous vehicles as part of a socio-technical system to extend previous understandings of trust and explore trust in autonomous vehicles in concrete social contexts. We conducted online co-creation workshops with 22 participants, using design probes to explore trust and AVs in relation to people’s everyday lives. Us- ing a systemic perspective, we show how trust and acceptance depend not only on the underlying AV technology but also - if not more so - on human-to-human rela- tionships and real-life social circumstances. We argue that when investigating issues of trust and automation, the scope of analysis needs to be broadened to include a more complex socio-technical set of (human and non-human) agents, to extend from momentary human-computer interactions to a wider timescale, and be situated in concrete spaces, social networks, and situations. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.