The situation
‘Let’s engage residents’ sounds great in a meeting. The hard part begins when you actually give people agency — for weeks, without ready answers and, unexpectedly, without meeting in person.
Projects · anonymised process
Sustainability Lab — we invited residents to design their city. Then everyone had to stay home.
‘Let’s engage residents’ sounds great in a meeting. The hard part begins when you actually give people agency — for weeks, without ready answers and, unexpectedly, without meeting in person.
1,200+resident responses
50+active co-creators
2programme editions
13developed concepts
Case at a glance
My responsibility
I co-designed the whole mechanism: research, recruitment, team formation, workshops and everything that kept the work moving between sessions. I guided people through the moments when enthusiasm met chaos, helped teams make decisions and made sure good intentions became something they could show, test and develop further.
What remained
The process combined resident evidence, expert knowledge and grassroots creativity in 13 developed concepts — from repair and sharing services to solutions supporting sorting and food-waste prevention. More important than the count was a model that helped people with no shared history move from willingness to act through research, prototyping and testing to an informed implementation conversation.
The challenge
We did not want to ask for opinions. We wanted to hand over some responsibility.
The starting ambition was to reduce urban waste — not through another awareness campaign, but by inviting residents to co-design responses grounded in everyday experience.
The format demanded commitment over many weeks, during and between workshops. No ready-made model existed, and just before launch the pandemic removed all in-person contact. A process designed for at most 30 people had to be rebuilt to sustain relationships, momentum and a shared purpose remotely.
My role
I co-designed the whole mechanism: research, recruitment, team formation, workshops and everything that kept the work moving between sessions. I guided people through the moments when enthusiasm met chaos, helped teams make decisions and made sure good intentions became something they could show, test and develop further.
The work
Before inviting dozens of people, we tested where the process might fall apart.
Ground challenges in reality
We reviewed existing evidence and ran nine resident surveys. 1,211 responses became 17 specific challenges spanning sorting, repair, reuse and food-waste prevention.
Prototype the initiative itself
Before launch, we ran a five-session micro-pilot. It tested workshop length, forming teams from individual applicants, the guidance people needed and what actually sustained engagement.
Redesign the experience for remote work
The pandemic changed the conditions, not the ambition. Rather than moving workshops onto video calls, we built a complete work ecosystem: shared spaces, preparatory content, community channels, independent work and consultations.
Form teams around problems
People chose the challenge they genuinely cared about and formed teams around it. They were not programme recipients or resources allocated to tasks — they became co-creators responsible for direction and pace.
Guide work from empathy to testing
Every team researched users, reframed the problem, generated ideas, prototyped and tested with residents. Workshops triggered each stage, while a substantial part of the work happened independently between sessions.
Add a route towards implementation
We extended the design process with context analysis, precedents, risks and next steps. Teams finished with more than a prototype: they had a basis for discussing further development with potential partners.
Key decisions
Co-creators, not attendees
The programme gave people responsibility for solutions. The organising team provided structure, expertise and support — not ready-made answers.
Problems before ideas
Challenges came from resident evidence, and each team conducted further conversations to test its assumptions about intended users.
Prototype the way of working
The pilot did not test one environmental solution. It tested the co-creation service itself before the cost and risk of scaling it.
A workshop only sets the rhythm
Continuity came from tasks, consultations, shared space and team relationships. Meetings set the pace without pretending to be the whole process.
The value
The ideas mattered. More important was that strangers managed to carry a real process together.
The process combined resident evidence, expert knowledge and grassroots creativity in 13 developed concepts — from repair and sharing services to solutions supporting sorting and food-waste prevention. More important than the count was a model that helped people with no shared history move from willingness to act through research, prototyping and testing to an informed implementation conversation.
For residents
Agency, practical design capability and the opportunity to develop responses to problems they experienced themselves.
For the city and partners
More than 1,200 resident voices turned into a portfolio of tested directions and a new dialogue channel for improving the waste system.
For the environment
Concepts supporting reduced consumption and waste, repair, reuse, sharing and more informed everyday decisions.
An honest outcome
No, thirteen ideas did not transform the city overnight.
Not every concept was implemented — and implementation was not the finish line of this stage. The value lay in reducing uncertainty: problems were grounded in evidence, solutions were challenged with intended users, and teams were equipped for further conversations with organisations holding the resources and mandate to implement.