The social challenge for the project Mission: Mental health in school is about promoting a sustainable school with a focus on students' well-being and quality of life via mission- and innovation-driven efforts. A central question for the implementation of the project plan concerns how regional and municipal actors (especially the school), business, civil society organizations, academia, etc. can support each other in the direction of the project plan's goals, impact goals and vision.
RISE's mission is to follow up, evaluate and proactively support the development of the project led by Region Blekinge. The region ranks highest in Sweden in terms of prescriptions for antidepressants within the age group 0–17 years. In Rödebyskolan, grades 1–9, in Karlskrona municipality, 25% of students lacked complete grades in the academic year 2021/2022.

The project has two aims:

1) "to use a system-changing approach based on the needs of the target group to create the best conditions to sustainably promote mental health in the school in Blekinge."
2) "that the conditions that the project builds up should create opportunities to scale up the work in order to be able to promote the mental health of more students and also school staff and guardians within the framework of larger national and international investments."

The concrete goal is to, based on the experiences from the follow-up of the project, build a follow-up and evaluation model for the joint work of Region Blekinge and Blekinge's municipalities with the complex social challenges that fall within the framework of the agreement on mental health and suicide prevention - "Mission mental health".

RISE shall contribute with the following research-related efforts:

• Action research that aims to contribute with learning and development as qualitative process support relating to organization, governance, implementation and follow-up.
• Effect logic chain with activities, indicators, objectives and follow-up

Action-driven Ethics supports the ability to identify ethical challenges and opportunities through human-experience, and strengthens the capacity to respond in changing landscapes. In an approach for participatory action research that is grounded in design, post-humanism and ethics, it makes it possible for participants to engage in the discussion from a multi-level perspective.

Gathering a group of stakeholders around a shared context, action-driven research compliments work around compliance with parameters (eg. law, certification frameworks, codes of conduct) and qualitative consequences (eg. CO2 impact). Often the context for this challenge is around an emerging digital technology.

For example, in the project "Sjyst data", to explore "fairness" in digitalisation, we developed activities in the form of experiments and facilitated discussions with stakeholders from various industries, including museums, start-ups, banks and telecommunications. For Kista Science city, we created a workshop series that introduced concepts related to digital ethics in the form of virtues and connected these to their context of sensor security cameras in public spaces.

Action Driven Ethics can be a way to support experimentation, discussions and transformation in the areas of digitalisation, system development, policy, innovation governance and urban planning. We work with developing new methods for working with digital ethics for municipalities, governmental authorities, industry and organisations.

Sweden has previously had low energy costs and mostly rents which include heating costs. With a relatively strong social policy, the authorities have not seen a need to distinguish energy poverty from other forms of poverty. But as energy prices have skyrocketed for a number of different reasons in the past two years, energy poverty has flared up as an important area both for Swedish authorities and in research.

Jenny von Platten's doctoral project (between RISE and LTH) partially investigated energy poverty. However, there are several new research questions that need to be answered in relation to energy poverty in Sweden. This new doctoral project is based on the following subsequent research questions:

1. Mapping of energy poverty
   • How should energy poverty be measured?
   • What geographical, technical and legal conditions (varying energy costs, varying heating systems and cold rent in the multi-dwelling stock) exist?
   • How does energy poverty relate to other types of poverty?
2. Policy overview
   • What risks are there for shutdowns / can you protect against shutdowns?
   • To what extent do laws and guidelines protect the most disadvantaged? The electricity price supports that were/are, how well have they hit?
3. How can the results of research questions 1 and 2 be translated into an evidence-based decision basis for policy development within authorities?

Currently, this project is in its startup phase. The purpose of the project is to use the segregation barometer and analyze data from the segregation barometer in conjunction with data from energy declarations and the property register to explain the development of segregation and its impact in Sweden. This is done to make Delmos's work useful for research the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning.

This project includes a doctoral position. Although the goal is to develop expertise that becomes a resource for the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, the doctoral student will be academically free and can establish an area of expertise that is relevant for actors in need of analysis of segregation in Sweden's housing stock. The following research questions are proposed for the doctoral student:

1. How should segregation be explained using data from the segregation barometer?
2. How has segregation developed in Sweden in recent decades?
3. What results can we see in data from areas in which there have been projects working with segregation during the last decades.
4. How can the results of research questions 1, 2, and 3 be translated into evidence-based decision-making support for policy development within government agencies?

Citizen involvement in the areas of digitalisation, system development, policy, innovation governance and urban planning are crucial for us to gain a much broader perspective and supports transitions in society which are inclusive for all. Citizen dialogues can be a way to support citizen initiatives, citizen sustainable lifestyles and resolve conflicts. However, there are also certain risks of running citizen dialogues which can lead to unintended consequences. For example, citizens can lose trust in organisations due to the misalignment of citizen expectations in relation to the outcome of citizen dialogues, the unbalanced representation of certain groups of citizens resulting in increased exclusion, or organisations being overwhelmed from not having the resources or processes in place to run citizen dialogues.

One important area for citizen dialogues development is in the digital transformation of the public sector. With the wide-scale adoption of digital technologies (AI, Big Data, chatbots), data-driven decision making and higher degree of process automation, digital services are becoming more complex. Governmental services and systems should be accessible for everyone who needs to use them, and not exclude or have bias against certain groups of citizens. Thus, the knowledge of different citizen and business needs are extremely important to ensure these services are designed in an inclusive way for the entire society. For example, in the project "Citizen Dialogues for the Future of Public Services around Life Events" with DIGG (Agency for Digital Government, we developed online citizen dialogues focused around the needs citizens encountered around Life Events. Material and methods were created from the research to support DIGG's discussions in creating a digital roadmap for the vision of public services in 2030.

We work with citizen dialogue development with municipalities, governmental authorities, industry and organisations. We combine participatory design, sociology, interaction design and system perspectives to develop and prototype methods and processes for running citizen dialogues, discussing citizen needs with stakeholders and re-designing systems based on citizen perspectives. The purpose of this is to explore and address the challenges associated with citizen engagement at different levels.

Background

When a public place is to be developed or retrofitted, different ways of designing and programming the site need to be evaluated and weighed against each other. The type of activities that make up such a process, such as financial calculations, investigations, stakeholder dialogues, architectural competitions, procurements and political decisions, are permeated by value judgments. However, these values are generally unspoken and taken for granted. This is despite the fact that in practice they have an impact on what public places we get and how they function.

Aim and contributions

The aim of the project Valuation of public spaces for urban transitions is to generate knowledge on how how valuations are articulated in the design of public spaces and how these govern processes and outcomes.

Generating knowledge about the activities, methods and technologies of valuation that are employed in public space design is important as the choice of such in practice has an impact on which public places we get. If we want more well-functioning public places that support a transition to more sustainable and healthy lifestyles as well as to more robust business communities, it is important that the practices and technologies of valuation which are employed help rather than hinder such a development.

This project therefore wants to generate knowledge, tools and technologies that can help actors design processes and places that support such transitions. The project also wants to contribute to ongoing academic debates and knowledge developments in the field.

Project activities

The project is made up of three parts:

1) A review of current research in relevant fields and disciplines;

2) A case study focused on the retrofitting of the Brunnsparken square in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. Here, empirical data will be collected based on interviews, document studies, media studies and spatial analysis;

3) Compilation of resarch results in the form of I) scientific articles that will be a part of one of the project participants' PhD thesises and II) a report aimed at, and produced in dialogue with, actors in the industry, especially those whom have participated in the retrofitting of Brunnsparken.

What we do:

• Evaluations through the involvement of the target group, user testing and expert evaluations

• Review of websites, documents and apps in accordance with legal requirements and standards

• Provide advice and support in design processes, including through requirements and needs analysis

• Create design proposals

• Education in accessibility

• Access to the UX lab

What is accessibility?

When using products and services, we all have different needs and abilities that can be determined by for instance permanent disabilities and/or a temporary life situation. 

Designing for an inclusive society implies creating solutions that reduce obstacles in the environment, so that everyone can participate in society in an equal way, regardless of our abilities. Accessibility is created, for instance, through universal design, which means that cities, environments, products and services are adapted to people's different needs, conditions and wishes. This is part of Agenda 2030 - the UN's global goals for Sustainable Development, goal 11 on Sustainable cities and societies. 

Why work with accessibility?

Accessibility contributes to creating a socially sustainable society where everyone is included. In addition, there are also EU requirements declaring that public authorities' websites, apps, and documents must be accessible. By 2025, all EU countries must also have legislated that certain products and services in the private sector must be accessible. In addition, accessible products can lead to competitive products and services since they are easy to use for all target groups.

How do we work with accessibility?

We work to create accessible physical and digital environments, products and services. An essential aspect of the work is to include the needs of the target group. We do this, among other ways, through interviews, user tests, expert evaluations and workshops, some of which we conduct in the high-tech UX lab. In this way, we develop an understanding of the users and their needs.

There are universal design principles for designing environments, products and services that as many people as possible can access and use. There are also standards, such as the European Standard for Accessibility, EN 301 549, and WCAG 2.1 that specify guidelines for creating accessible digital products. We base our expert evaluations on these.

In this project, Kristianstad Municipality, in collaboration with RISE and Sesam Arkitekter, explored the role that flexible, small-scale, and temporary interventions and expertiments can play in revitalising public spaces in towns—complementing traditional planning processes. Such interventions may include new, small-scale and flexible ways of testing, establishing and disseminating mobility services, art and culture, social services, retail, sports, play and recreation, education, and more.

The first phase of the project involved a research review focused on:

1. the future of public spaces in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and
2. the role of temporary solutions and experiments in public spaces in smaller towns around the world.

In the second phase, case studies were conducted in four public spaces within Kristianstad Municipality: Stora Torg and the Gamlegården Centre in Kristianstad, Fjälkinge Station Square, and the village square in Maglehem. These locations were selected because they represent four different types of public spaces typically found across Sweden. The insights are therefore transferable to many human settlements, including central towns, suburbs, larger urban areas and smaller settlements. 

Each site was studied in terms of its characteristics and challenges, in dialogue with local stakeholders such as residents and business owners. In addition, the social, economic, physical and knowledge-based resources available at each site were identified, focusing on their potential to be activated through temporary placemaking interventions. Based on the case studies and the literature review, a concept proposal was developed for each site, outlining how it could be revitalised in collaboration with local stakeholders.

The project resulted in a review of existing research, detailed site analyses, and the development of design proposals showing how each of the four locations could undergo step-by-step transformations in the coming years through temporary, small-scale interventions. These proposals were presented to the public through exhibitions held at each site during the summer of 2023. In addition, the project produced a “cookbook” outlining how municipalities, property owners, civil society actors and others can collaboratively transform spaces using temporary, small-scale solutions.