Earlier this year the Open Source Lab released the Sustainable Mobility Kit, an open workshop tool comprising a set of 21 printed cards to incite active engagement in the research results that developed the Sustainable Open Mobility Taxonomy. The kit can be applied in transport planning collaboration, policy making, education, training, design ideation or innovation sprints.

The cards were tested in workshops which highlighted their usefulness as a training and sense making tool. Particularly for individuals and teams in larger organisations that work as part of the transport sector but in siloes, the cards provided a balance of introductory knowledge, systems thinking insights including feedback loops and identification of potential relationships between different elements and actors. In this way they can be used to support built environment practitioners such as engineers, planners, architects, service delivery specialists to effectively mediate between top-down and bottom-up stakeholders despite the complexity involved.

Accommodating context and alternate ideas

Feedback from workshop participants showed that some scope to appropriate the cards according to the user’s perspective would be ideal. During the workshops many participants improvised their own cards from materials at hand. Inventing ways to make the cards applicable to differing contexts and actors, deepening possibilities for their own engagement in the collaborative activities through a DIY ethos. To encourage this kind of spontaneous and individualised adaptation of the card deck in future use cases, additional cards were designed and are now included in every deck so that topics or stakeholders can be created by participants intuitively.

The Sustainable Mobility Kit deck (with DIY card) is available for download here or at the Open Source Lab GitHub repository.