Getting personal: exploring the usage of persona in order to optimize the involvement of a living lab panel

iMinds Living Labs started with living lab research in 2009. Living lab research involves gathering user feedback on innovations implemented in a real-life context (Eriksson et al., 2005). This can be facilitated by means of a panel-based approach (Schuurman et al., 2012). In order to keep a panel motivated for participating in living lab research it can be beneficial to generate a sense of belonging to a community. Logghe et al. (2014) examined the motivations and behavior of the panel members and concluded that there are four groups of panel member types, each with their own motivations and behavior patterns. But how can a living lab get to know its panel members better? How can every panel member be approached in their preferred way? How can every panel member be stimulated to keep on participating in living lab research? How can a community feeling be created? In order to gather more information about each panel member type, we developed a four way segmentation of the panel which we translated into four distinct persona. These persona will be used as a basis for community building, a future panel kit, experimenting with research approaches,… supplemented with other methodologies

Designing library tools: the (un)importance of employee involvement

The growing trend of public institutions to open up data and information to citizens encouraged archives and libraries to enhance the disclosure of their content towards end-users. This implies technical challenges as more and more information is exchanged not only between people, but also between different databases and applications which are consulted by different user groups through different devices and entry points. For libraries, the challenge lies in constructing a properly functioning catalogue which is able to combine a huge amount of information from various sources and is consultable by a large group of end-users in a user friendly manner. Based on the User Centred Design paradigm and Kaulio’s (1998) degrees of user involvement in innovation, this paper wants to consider whether involving users during the creation of metadata tools can result in more motivated library co-workers and a more appreciated tool and (hopefully) in a permanent tagging tool

Action research as a framework to evaluate the operation of a living lab

Living lab research consists of gathering user feedback on innovations implemented in a real-life context (Eriksson et al., 2005). This can be facilitated by means of a panel-based approach (Schuurman et al., 2012). Since this panel is vital for living lab research, it is important to know whether all panel members are satisfied with the operation of the living lab itself. An interesting way to capture and act upon the delights and frustrations of a panel can be by adopting an action research approach. Within a participatory action research process, "communities of inquiry and action evolve and address questions and issues that are significant for those who participate as co-researchers" (Reason and Bradbury, 2008). Action research contrasts with many research methods, which emphasize disinterested researchers and reproducibility of findings. Amongst others, Ståhlbröst (2008) already used action research as a methodology within a living lab environment aiming to involve users early and throughout the whole development process, and to design new IT systems from the basis of these users’ needs. But how can this research approach be a framework to get to know your participants’ thoughts on the operation of your living lab? How can action research help to involve as much panel members as possible and to encourage people to share their opinion? Does active research actually result in more practical solutions for a detected problem? In order to capture and solve frustrations of the iMinds Living Lab panel members, a researcher was actively involved in a selection of living lab projects and panel members themselves were inserted in the reflection phase of an action design research from which the obtained knowledge resulted in the co-creation of an iMinds Living Labs website for panel members

Innovation is created by humans, not by systems: an exploration of user involvement in living labs: user motivation versus lead user criteria

The past few years companies have become more interested in involving users during the production process of their products. On the other hand, a group of users started to innovate on their own. Users also became interested in becoming part of the production processes themselves. Certain users experience certain needs earlier than others and they enjoy finding solutions for these needs. They are called Lead Users (von Hippel, 2005). Living Labs are one possibility for users to realize this interest to innovate. iLab.o, the Living Lab division of iMinds, has been organizing Living Lab research since 2009. To get a better view on the motivations of this panel, we analyzed the behavior of the involved users from September 2009 to December 2013. We tried to detect Lead Users, but it is not obvious to define people as Lead Users because of the different used definitions. Instead, we divided this panel into three types of users based on the intensity of their involvement: passive, sleeping and active users. A small group of users is extremely active and are been defined as “alpha users”. Based on interviews with these alpha users in November and December 2013, a better view on their motivations to keep participating in Living Lab research was made. In this paper we focus on the participation of these different user types in one research phase type within Living Lab research, more specifically co-creation sessions. By means of a comparative case study, we tried to get a better understanding of the behavior of the different user types. It became clear that in order to keep the panel involved it is important to focus on community building

Action research as a framework to evaluate the operations of a living lab

In this article, we propose an action research approach to capture and act upon the delights and frustrations of panel members who participate in living lab research in order to optimize the operations of the living lab itself. We used this approach to test the effectiveness of action research in providing guidelines to practitioners to evaluate and design effective and sustainable user involvement processes in living labs. We conducted a focused literature review and an in-depth case study of both the integration of a researcher within the community and the implementation of an action research project within an existing living lab. This living lab is regarded as both a forerunner and a best-practice example in Europe. Based on our findings, we recommend co-creating the "operations" of a living lab with the users themselves following a combined action research and living lab approach

Drivers for end-users' collaboration in participatory innovation development and living lab processes

Design for users often uses user-centered methods and methodologies. However, this requires an active participation of these users. In this article we explore the motivation and drivers for users to collaborate in innovation processes within a Living Lab environment and approach. We do this by means of data gathered during the course of four years of Living Lab-activity by iMinds-iLab.o on three levels: macro-level (general panel activity), meso-level (activity and motivation within a Living Lab), and micro-level (activity and motivation in a Living Lab-project)

Field observations in a living lab context: constructing a framework for the observers' role based on a comparative case study analysis

When developing innovations, particularly media innovations, there is a growing interest in user involvement for innovation development processes (Bogers, Afuah, & Bastian, 2010). One way to structure and govern this user involvement for research and development processes is the Living Lab approach (Almirall, 2008). One of the key assets of Living Labs is the implementation of the innovation in an ‘everyday life’ and ‘real-world’ environment over a longer period of time, as opposed to a single exposure (Følstad, 2008). Observation research can be considered as an appropriate method to measure these contextual elements. Nevertheless, observations are under-exposed in Living Lab literature. Therefore, this paper elaborates on the theoretical foundations and practical use of observations during Living Lab field trials, integrating traditional ethnographic frameworks with long-term user-centric innovation research. This is studied by means of a multiple case study comparison, applied to four Living Lab projects. These cases are analyzed on multiple levels (practical organization and characteristics of Living Lab research). This allows an in-depth comparison, provides a deeper understanding of this method within a broader research process (Yin, 1984) and allows assessing the nature of observations within Living Lab research

Why collaborate in long-term innovation research? An exploration of user motivations in Living Labs

One of the central elements of Living Labs is the focus on end user involvement in IT-product and service development processes (Ståhlbröst, 2008; Ståhlbröst et al., 2009). Whereas users definitely play a central role in Living Lab research, users’ motivations to participate in such long-term, rather intensive research and development tracks are nevertheless largely unexplored. The question is not any longer about why we should involve users, but rather how they should be involved in Living Lab research activities, and specifically in long-term collaboration initiatives. This article contributes to this gap in literature by providing an overview of current academic understandings and presenting the first results of our own research on this matter. So far, research on user motivations has been conducted from different academic disciplines and has been applied to different domains. Therefore, the concept of motivation has a rather complex nature. One of the most solid and cited academic theories that can be applied on innovation and user participation is the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1988,1991). While this theory is rather broad, other authors specifically focus on user involvement in the development of innovations (e.g. Hassinger, 1959; Rogers, 2003). An important dimension in most of these theories is the end users’ need for certain solutions or specific products (e.g. Xu, 2007; Yang & Liu, 2011, Von Hippel, 2005). Current understandings of user motivations to become part of a Living Lab are limited, with exception of Leminen & Westerlund (2012) and Ståhlbröst (2012), but we can learn from findings on motivation in firm-hosted user communities. These studies show that end users are mainly driven by willingness to help, to support a good cause and to be part of a project realization (Berglin and Handberg, 2013). According to Lu and Wei (2011) personal interaction and exchanging information have the most positive effect on end user participation. Other authors such as Füller (2006) focus on the importance of intrinsic interest in the innovation activity and curiosity as the main motives for the consumers’ willingness to participate in new product developments. Participants in firm-hosted user communities are mostly hobbyists or people looking for firm recognition (Jeppesen & Frederiksen, 2006). In crowdsourcing literature, some of the main identified drivers of participation are idealistic reasons and career concerns (e.g. Hann et al., 2002) and building a meaningful product (Chandler & Kapelner, 2013). While intrinsic motivations seem to be very important (Kaufman, Veit and Schulz, 2011), Rogstadius et al. (2011) show that there also exists interaction between intrinsic motivations and extrinsic motivations, such as direct or indirect monetary compensation or recognition by others (Hars and Ou, 2002), for end users to participate in the innovation development process. Existing literature on motivations of user participation is rather diverse and uses different measures and point of views. On top of that, there is a clear gap in literature when it comes to user motivations to participate in Living Lab research. Therefore, the central research question in this paper is: “What drives users to participate in Living Labs and which parameters affect long-term or continuous participation?” Within this research question we also take into account the diversity of the different Living Lab stages in order to capture some of the complexity of this question. Besides assessing the global motivations, this article also elaborates on the differences between motivations to participate in a survey, an offline workshop and a field trial within a Living Lab context. Finally, an analysis is made of the phenomenon of repeated participation. The data for this research are collected in the Flemish Living Lab Platform, Mediatuin Living Lab and LeYLab. Measurements were conducted using a large scale survey (n:639), during nine co-creation sessions (n:63) and during a short survey after a field trial (n:26). The motivations to participate were being measured using binary variables measuring the following motivations: (1) collaboration with others (2) solving challenges (3) personal interest (4) being the first (5) contribute to society (6) curiosity (7) feeling part of a community (8) use of skills (9) learning (10) influence (11) fun (12) expanding the social network (13) expected professional benefit (14) financial or material incentive (15) doing friends a favor (16) peer influence and (17) duty. This article also compares these variables between three main Living Lab research activities: online surveys, co-creation sessions and field trials. The results of our explorative research show that for Living Lab participation collaboration with others is the most occurring motivation (83,3%), followed by solving challenges (81,2%) and personal interest (78,1%). Nevertheless, 56,5% also expects a financial/material reward. Only 39,1% expects to have an actual impact on the innovation. In face-to-face co-creation workshops, the motivation to have an influence is more occurring than in field trials and online surveys. Compared to co-creation sessions and field trials, curiosity is a less occurring motivation for participation in online surveys. Furthermore, co-creation sessions have the highest ratings for both the use of skills and the motivation to contribute to society. Overall, the main motivators to participate have an intrinsic nature, but our results show that for repeated participation, material incentives become more important and the motivation use of skills, decreases. These findings offer a deeper understanding of user motivations in Living Lab research. On a practical level, the most important dimensions should be central in the management of Living Lab user panels in order to reach maximum user engagement and to increase the quality of response. On a more theoretical level, these data are an exploration of user motivations, but should be the first step towards a theoretical model, which understands voluntary engagement in Living Lab research. Many future research questions exist on this largely unexplored domain, such as the relationship between motivations and panel drop-outs and a typology of different types of users in a Living Lab. These insights are important to assess the validity of Living Lab research as well

Governing quintuple helix innovation : urban living labs and socio-ecological entrepreneurship

Growing urbanization puts pressure on both social and ecological systems. This pressure raises complex and multi-facetted challenges that can only be tackled by collaborative and distributed innovation development processes. However, theoretical frameworks that assess such collaborations are often very conceptual, with little focus on the actual governance mechanisms that facilitate them. This article studies the urban living lab concept as an inter-organizational design and multi-stakeholder innovation development process to govern the quintuple helix model for innovation by means of an action research based multidimensional case study design, which focuses on the concepts of innovation democracy, mode 3 knowledge production, the innovation ecosystem as a system of societal subsystems, and socio-ecological transition. In this way, we provide a more profound understanding of such innovation processes to tackle socio-ecological challenges by means of public-private interactions driven by eco-entrepreneurship

Co-creation in living labs: exploring the role of user characteristics on innovation contribution

Since the 1970s, the innovative potential of users has been recognized by von Hippel and his seminal works on the Customer Active Paradigm (CAP) and Lead Users. This fostered further research into the nature of user contribution in NPD and the characteristics of innovative and innovating users. This research stream has been labeled user innovation and looks at the utility gains for end-users when involved in innovation. More recently, open innovation approaches have been looking to integrate the insights and creative potential of users through various methods and tools. One of these approaches gaining ground are the so-called Living Labs, an innovation approach relying on intensive user involvement through co-creation, using real-life settings and a multi-stakeholder approach. Although user involvement is seen as key within these Living Labs, research integrating the insights from user innovation into ways of user selection and user contribution in Living Labs is scarce. Within this paper, we will explore some of the hypotheses from user innovation regarding user characteristics in three concrete Living Lab projects and assess whether these characteristics have an impact on the outcomes and on the user contribution. The results indicate that it is necessary to take into account domain-related as well as innovation-specific characteristics, otherwise this may lead to one-dimensional user contributions. Moreover, our research suggests that Living Labs are capable to facilitate a diversity of user contributions through a mix of self-selection and purposeful sampling