From simplex to complex: designing for wellbeing at scale

In this article, we propose a theoretical framework of reference for the design for wellbeing, mainly in large techno ecosystems like smart cities and smart learning ecosystems taken here as examples. Starting from a people/human-centered vision of such ecosystems and the identification of their smartness with the ASLERD pyramids of needs, the mapping on the levels of this latter of the wellbeing – either defined by the living conditions generated by the context and perceived at the individual level due to the involvement in the technologically augmented processes taking place within the ecosystem – is discussed. It is also shown that the multidimensional smartness-wellbeing construct incorporates the perspective of the design for the experience, whatever the focus and the zoom level applied by the designers to the ecosystem under consideration. Finally, we show that the proposed theoretical framework allows the adoption of a bottom-up participatory approach to evaluate the smartness of the ecosystems of interest and, thus, the possibility of comparing ecosystems with similar characteristics and identifying their peculiarities with respect to the proposed framework.