Urban labs are arenas for fostering urban sustainable transitions, where different actors experiment and learn together how to create inclusive and sustainable cities. A key aspect of these processes is social learning, which is the collaborative learning process through which new understandings and practices emerge from the activities of urban labs. Social learning also includes the process through which these understandings and practices are further anchored and can transform the organizations participating in urban labs. Social learning is seen as key to tackling polarization and creating transformational capacity at different levels. This article explores how social learning can strengthen urban labs’ democratic ambitions. Building on the insights emerging from a collaborative learning process with civil servants within an urban lab, it highlights the need for ensuring plurality and challenging privilege in social learning. It also emphasizes the importance of nurturing a listening capacity within urban labs and municipal organizations.

This document is a guide for the development of local co-design activities, produced within the project Bauhaus of the Seas Sails (Project ID: 101079995). It aims to provide indications and support for howto conduct codesign locally, addressing the important aspects to consider and questions to reflectabout. It starts by identifying and defining four core principles for the development of thedemonstrators (sustainable, inclusive, aesthetic, and locally grounded) and then introduces how co -design engages with these four principles. It overviews the different actors involved and a generaltimeline for the co-design process. Further, it provides specific suggestions on how to develop thecodesign practice locally and with relevance to the area in which you are introducing it.

It has been highlighted how design engagement with the public sector risks being either irrelevant or instrumental to technocratic agendas due to a lack of understanding of the public sector’s nature. Based on the idea of public sector innovation as a matter of learning and adaptation for continuous improvement, this article looks at how participatory design approaches can be used to drive co-learning processes within the public sector, namely, collaborative learning processes about institutional aspects. It reflects on the authors’ engagement within a Swedish public organisation that relied on traditional design processes and co-learning processes. By analysing these processes, the article highlights how design as problem framing, by supporting collaborative reflexivity, can be a fruitful way to engage with institutional aspect.

This workshop explores learning in Participatory Design (PD). We invite the PD community to reflect on the multiple ways learning can strengthen and expand how we frame and drive participatory design to reflect on how we can expand learning in PD to gain an understanding for the complex system we are all part of, for the interdependence of social, ecological and economic systems. Through this workshop, we will invite participants to address questions such as: What theories and concepts can be used to understand learning in PD? What kind of approaches are used to foster learning in PD? How is learning evaluated in PD? The workshop will bring together members of the PD community interested in these questions, and serve as the basis for developing ongoing and new collaborations around the topic of learning in PD.    

Rising societal polarisations around health and climate crises have brought more attention to the close relations between social and environmental challenges. These polarisations triggered an interest in the participatory design (PD) field in developing approaches that enhance connections between diverse actors operating across societal and environmental sectors. However, the capabilities needed for these approaches have not been sufficiently articulated in PD research and education. To fill in this gap, we define ‘reworlding’ as an operation of self-critique within PD that engages with capabilities needed to reveal and articulate radical interdependencies between humans and more-than-humans, across social and environmental worlds, and within situated contexts. We propose both the redefinition of the design capabilities needed for (re)connecting these worlds (retracing, reconnecting, reimagining and reinstitutioning), as well as a reconsideration of learning environments where these capabilities can be tested and enhanced.  

Public organizations are increasing their engagement with innovation as they respond to the imminent environmental social and economic challenges. These responses are often achieved by replicating ideas and processes from the private sector without adapting them to the unique specificities and characteristics of the public sector. 

In our work we observed how this translation (private to public sector innovation) is not easy to accomplish however, it is important in terms of creating a grounded understanding of innovation that can be shared among public organizations as well as with external actors, politicians and citizens.

In this short booklet, we provide some suggestions for how to reflect on public sector innovation. We mostly highligh the differences with private sector innovation and touch upon the role of innovation labs and leadership for public sector innovation. 

The aim of this booklet is to provide inspiration and starting points for discussions rather than definitive answers. 

We ourselves are also on this journey to better understand this question and welcome any comments and/or suggestions on this material. Please feel free to reach out to us!

Public Innovation Labs are rapidly spreading with the aim of improving public sector responses to societal issues. However, labs are often struggling to embed their outcomes in ordinary activities. The article builds on the notions of organizational learning and translation and on the case of an innovation lab at the municipal level to articulate some of the challenges and limits of labs in relating to public organizations institutional dimension. It also describes possible formats and approaches to meaningfully engage with ordinary activities, structures and power dynamics within the public sector.

This article contributes to the further understanding of how (service) design can engage with organisational change. It does so by applying translation theory and building on the insights from a 7-year-long collaboration with a public agency, during which three attempts at introducing new ways of working were carried out. Translation theory understands organisational change as an intentional and contingent process through which ideas are materialised in possible translation objects that intervene in organisational practices, structures, and assumptions. The longitudinal study highlights how to bring about change, translation processes, and the objects needed to balance the reproduction and challenging of existing practices, structures, and assumptions within organisations. Moreover, translation processes interact with existing power dynamics, which cause reactions to change interventions by, among other things, influencing the legitimacy and mandate of the processes. Therefore, in addition to the mobilisation of internal organisational knowledge, (service) design that engages with organisational change needs to be aware of both power dynamics and to develop approaches and sensibilities to be able to listen and respond to the consequences that interventions in these dynamics might create.