Beyond convenience: Designing location-based apps for shared spaces
Author ADM+S Centre
Date 13 July 2026
Whether you’re ordering dinner, booking an Airbnb or unlocking an e-scooter, location-based apps have become part of everyday life.
Unlike many digital services, however, location-based platforms do not exist only on a screen. They are embedded in the physical world, shaping how people move through cities, how public spaces are used, and who can access services.
This means their impacts extend beyond the people using them. They also affect the pedestrians, cyclists, businesses and communities who share these spaces.Traditional design approaches tend to focus on the needs of individual users, making it difficult to account for the broader social and spatial impacts these technologies create.
To help address these challenges, new research has developed a design framework called Location-Aware Value Sensitive Design (LA-VSD). Building on existing Value Sensitive Design methods, LA-VSD is tailored to location-based services, helping designers consider not only the people who use these technologies, but also the communities and environments affected by them.
Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society at RMIT University and UNSW examined these challenges through a case study of shared e-scooter services in Melbourne, Australia, exploring how a Location-Aware Value Sensitive Design framework could improve the design of technology for the places we share.
When digital services meet physical spaces
Location-based services use real-time location data to provide services such as ride-sharing, accommodation, food delivery and navigation. However, because they operate in shared physical environments, they can create tensions between different groups.
For example, a rider may value the convenience of leaving an e-scooter close to their destination, while a pedestrian may experience the same scooter as an obstacle blocking a footpath.
Similarly, an e-scooter user may appreciate the flexibility of riding anywhere, while cyclists and drivers may experience frustration when different transport modes compete for limited road space.
Looking beyond the user
Traditional technology design often focuses on direct users. But the researchers argue that this approach can overlook important stakeholders who experience the consequences of digital systems without choosing to use them.
The LA-VSD framework builds on Value Sensitive Design, an established approach for incorporating human values into technology design, by adapting it for services that are embedded in physical places.
The framework introduces three design principles:
1.Consider local space-sharing scenarios
Designers should identify all stakeholders affected by a service, including indirect stakeholders such as pedestrians, cyclists and local communities.
In the Melbourne e-scooter case, analysing local usage patterns helped researchers identify which groups were most affected. This process informed the identification of riders and service providers as direct stakeholders. Other road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers, governing authorities, public transport services, and local businesses, emerged as indirect stakeholders affected by the service.
Pedestrians and cyclists emerged as key stakeholders because their movement through shared spaces frequently overlapped with scooter activity.
2. Adapt methods to capture local and physical interactions
The researchers found that understanding location-based services requires looking beyond digital interactions such as app usability.
Interviews with riders, cyclists, pedestrians, service providers and council representatives revealed tensions around:
- safety in shared spaces
- poorly parked scooters blocking footpaths
- unclear riding rules
- differences in local regulations
- cultural attitudes towards transport and mobility
For example, some riders avoided bike lanes because they felt unsafe, while some pedestrians were frustrated by scooters parked in places that restricted access.
3. Align values across digital and physical layers
The final principle encourages designers to consider both the digital and physical parts of a service.
The researchers note that while digital design may foreground values such as privacy, transparency, or usability, the same values can manifest quite differently in physical contexts.
These design directions are conceptual rather than implemented or evaluated; their purpose is to demonstrate how the principle of aligning values across digital and physical layers can orient value-sensitive thinking about system architecture and infrastructure, rather than to serve as validated technical interventions.
Researchers see this as a starting point for future work that will co-design, prototype, and assess such value-aligned designs in practice.
The researchers proposed the following conceptual design directions:
Digital components
- Integrate context-aware route recommender system into the App
- Embed footpath-detection algorithms
- Guide users to designated parking points through the mobile App
- Display slow-go and no-go zone activation on the scooter interface
Physical components
- Add on-path signage for e-scooter allowed paths
- Implement physical indications for designated parking areas
- Integrate brighter lights for nighttime use and add built-in turn indicators
- Enhance scooter stability
These changes recognise that technology alone cannot solve every problem and that better outcomes require alignment between digital systems, physical infrastructure and community expectations.
Designing for the places we share
The study shows that responsible design of location-based services requires more than understanding individual users. It requires understanding the complex relationships between technology, communities and the environments where these systems operate.
Rather than treating physical spaces as passive backgrounds for digital services, LA-VSD encourages designers to recognise that location-based technologies actively shape those spaces.
“The LA-VSD framework offers a focused, practical enrichment that supports researchers and practitioners in operationalising Value Sensitive Design within Location Based Services – providing guidance that is actionable, context-aware, and oriented toward responsible and inclusive design.,” the researchers conclude.
As cities continue to adopt digital platforms for transport, commerce and social connection, approaches like LA-VSD may help ensure these technologies support not only individual convenience, but also safer and more inclusive shared environments.
Read the full research article: Applying Value Sensitive Design to Location-Based Services: Designing for Shared Spaces and Local Conditions
Authors: Hiruni Kegalle (ADM+S PhD graduate), Flora Salim, Mark Sanderson, Jeffrey Chan, & Danual Hettiachchi
