Living Labs
What is a living lab? A “living lab” is neither a traditional research lab nor a testbed (functionality and usability tests) but nore an “innovation platform” that brings together and involves end-users, researchers, industrialists, policy makers, and so on at the earlier stage of the innovation process. There is a network of living labs across the EU.
Citizens and end-users are not considered as “rats” or any other kind of animals observed in a laboratory! The aim is for them to validate the usability and acceptability and act as key contributors to the ideas generation and be engaged into the innovation process.
A nice metaphoric representation is to compare a “living lab” or “innovation platform” with a “garden of ideas”. Gardeners are the living lab stakeholders that are making sure any good idea has a chance of growing fast enough through complementary contributions to potentially prove its value for both the society (citizens) and end-users.
The Dehems Living Labs are in Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester and in Plovdiv and Ivanovo in Bulgaria. In Dehems the living lab volunteers help us gain insights into people’s behaviour regarding energy savings. Feedback from users will enable us develop a customer friendly system that many more people will like to use.
Participants learn about how to save energy and potentially make a saving on bills. There is also chance to exchange experiences with like-minded people in the other cities.
Save Your Energy, Birmingham, March 2009 from MDDA on Vimeo.