NOVELL’s take on the living lab
The term ‘Living Lab’ is used in many ways to describe many different activities. At its core, a living lab is about bringing stakeholders from four groups together: academia, government, industry, and society. Within this, there is often an expectation that there will also be significant interdisciplinary collaboration, acknowledging the complexity of the challenges the living lab is typically used to address.
There are two primary ways in which living labs operate: technically-oriented and socially-oriented (Franz 2014). NOVELL is somewhat unique in that it combines elements of both forms of living lab to create a research environment that has elements that are scientifically rigorous and socially explorative. The table below describes the two models, as well as how NOVELL is engaging with elements of each model in organising the Lab.
Technically Oriented Living Labs
Socially Oriented Living Labs
What do they do?
Focus: In a technically-oriented living lab, the focus is on the development and testing of a product, service or system to achieve a defined goal. The ‘living’ nature of the living lab is that the testing occurs in real-world conditions so that the complex variables of everyday life are encountered as part of the testing process.
Focus: In contrast to the hypothesis driven methods used in a technically oriented living lab, socially oriented living lab methods are based on stakeholder engagement, and deep social explorations of problems.
Where did they come from?
History: This form of living lab was pioneered by William Mitchell at MIT in the 1990s and is most closely aligned with an empirical model of scientific discovery through the testing of a hypothesis in real-world conditions.
History: Socially-oriented living labs can be linked with the participatory design and co-design movements that emerged in Scandinavia from the 1960s. These processes were formalised in the living lab framework with the establishment of the European Network of Living Labs in 2006.
How do they engage?
End-Users: The engagement of end-users in this model of living lab is focused on using their real-world knowledge and experience to test and evaluate proposed changes or interventions. End-users are also an important part of establishing the context within which interventions can be tested.
End-Users: Socially oriented living labs have a primary focus on end-user engagement, treating end-users as co-researchers and equal participants in the research and development processes. End-users are treated as partners in the development of ideas rather than as passive holders of knowledge. This means, the socially-oriented living lab needs to employ frameworks (such as co-design and co-creation) to help end-users to participate meaningfully in the research and development process.
How are we using this?
NOVELL: The first stage of the NOVELL project has focused on facilitating deep and generative conversations between end-users, industry, academia and government. Social research methodologies are used to translate the content generated through conversations and co-design activities into themes that become principles for the establishment of a design brief. This allows the brief setting process to reflect the priorities of the stakeholder groups that were brought together in the first stage, while also serving to establish a community of practice that has a deep understanding of the contributions of each of the stakeholder groups.
NOVELL: For NOVELL, this part of our living lab will be the rigorous testing and evaluation of new models of rehabilitation environments through immersive virtual environments generated by cutting-edge technology. These new models will be developed in response to the outcomes from the socially-oriented processes that have been run in stage 1 of the project.