Design for Movability: A New Design Research Challenge for Sustainable Design Scenarios in Urban Mobility

This paper proposes a research approach for addressing new sustainable design scenarios about urban mobility, from a product and service design perspective. The contribution introduces trends for promoting sustainable mobility solutions, also connected to the theme of active and healthy ageing, ranging from improving walkability to micro and active mobility. We propose to focus on the ‘movability’ concept as a designerly term to address new sustainable design scenarios in urban mobility. This term was coined in the ’60s within Piaggio, an Italian mobility company, and describes an opposing perspective to the predominant car-centric model. The movability concept emphasises walkability and the usage of emergent technologies to support the human ability to move. Consequently, we introduce the ‘Design for Movability’ (DxM) concept for addressing contemporary mobility challenges from a product and service design perspective. Case studies to explore the DxM perspective are presented both from the literature and the ‘research through design’ experiences of a research laboratory engaged in sustainable urban mobility through product design. The paper reports the early results by analysing the identified cases from the literature, and emergent concepts from Design Sprint sessions with young designers. Finally, a framework is proposed to be used in product and service design to address contemporary challenges in urban mobility. The paper concludes by reflecting on DxM as a design approach that favours the natural human predisposition to walk, with advantages in terms of recovering the relationship between humans and nature, humans and urban environment, rising social interaction, and people and urban wellbeing.