Design-Enabled Innovation in Smart City Context. Fostering Social Inclusion Through Intercultural Interaction

The strong migratory flows that are affecting European cities highlight a growing multiculturalism in urban areas, with consequent issues related to dialogue and inclusion of cultural diversity. Digital technologies and ubiquitous computing systems offer many opportunities for designing products and services aimed at enhancing interaction, collecting and sharing, knowledge, emotions, experiences, through platforms that support the increase of social awareness. The project investigates new creative, communicative and process paths, to encourage interaction and communication between different cultures that coexist in the same smart city context. M-EATING, a project funded by the H2020 framework program, aims to foster the engagement of different cultures in the urban environment and encourage them to interact with each other, including other types of stakeholders, from public administration to the third sector. with the experimentation of design thinking and service design thinking tools it was possible to create engagement between different stakeholders in the service and to involve other actors.