"With a large part of the built environment privately owned in many European cities, citizen engagement is crucial for the success of sustainability initiatives in urban areas. The use of digital platforms and tools can support this process, given their potential to enable remote participation, reach a large number of citizens, and enhance governance transparency. However, many digital platforms for citizen engagement in sustainability action remain underutilised.

This study adopts a user-centric perspective to analyse the interface design of over ten digital platforms and identify design elements that hinder or foster engagement. Our analysis highlights four main interface issues: disconnection between scientific data and personal experience, complex navigation, information overload, and limited opportunities for action.

To overcome these limitations, we developed a set of design guidelines addressing four themes: Awareness and framing, Individual and collective action, Effective use of data, and Navigation and visuals. We implemented these guidelines in two prototypes, focusing on heat waves and biodiversity loss in urban areas. The prototypes were tested in workshop settings with positive feedback from participants, corroborating the importance of citizen-centric interface design in ensuring effective citizen engagement." ... Read more

Today’s applied design researchers are where the action is. They have always operated as a catalyst of change: propelling and steering design and society into brighter futures (Andriessen & Van Turnhout, 2023). But now, more than ever, design researchers teamup with a broad range of stakeholders to get things done. They surround themselves with engineers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, professionals, citizens, and take leadership in sparking ideas, making things tangible, creating meaning, and driving change. In the wake of the many societal transitions needed to combat today’s challenges, everyone needs to change their ways, their thinking, and the structures they reside in. Applied design researchers can play a crucial role in making that effort worthwhile. They can be facilitators that help others to bridge boundaries of spheres of life, disciplines, sectors, and domains (Smeenk, 2022). ... Read more

What are the lessons that applied design researchers can take away from this book? What suggestions and recommendations can be derived from the experiences presented in the preceding chapters? On the one hand, it is clear that working with Living Labs offers unique opportunities to address some of society’s ambitious challenges. At the same time, it is also clear that it’s not necessarily that straightforward to deal with the dynamics of a Living Lab. In Chapter 1, Experimentation at the Heart of Societal Change, we presented our expectation that applied design researchers can play an important role in connecting different levels of the Living Lab and its surroundings. To explore this, we first discussed the Living Lab and its relationship with societal change processes. Second, we discussed the social dynamics that take place in the Living Lab itself. Third, we discussed the actual practices of applied design researchers within a Living Lab, for instance with regard to their engagement with tangible forms. In this final chapter, we present some of the overarching insights that can be drawn from the many reflections in this publication. ... Read more

Recent interest in biodiversity to combat climate crises led governments to use data platforms and sensing tools to monitor, conserve and increase city biodiversity. Given that most of these tools are designed for expert users and most city space is privately owned, there is a growing need for urban living labs (ULLs) approaches that combine community co-design with HCI for biodiversity. This paper develops and explores the BULL (Biodiversity Urban Living Lab) approach, building on the existing City Commons HCI framework, using research-through-design and action research methods. A BULL approach should not only engage citizens but also lead to opportunities for individual and collective action towards biodiversity as perceived common. Next to this, ecological and technological entities as non-human actors need to be involved in community-based co-creation in BULLs. The BULL approach provides a process and specific tools for multi-stakeholder groups, including more-than-human ones, to experiment with opportunities for more biodiversity in a local community, resulting in individual and collective action. ... Read more