Living-labs

ACTIVITY TYPE

DESCRIPTION

Living Labs is a method aimed at active involvement of citizens in processes – mainly long-term ones. Its advantage is that it allows for formalizing the framework of cooperation, inviting (and also maintaining in the process) key groups of stakeholders, and also – their active cooperation in diagnosing needs, developing and testing solutions.

To successfully develop a service using this approach,

it is important to thoroughly understand the methodology and then locate it to fit the conditions.

Introduction

Living labs aim at actively involving citizens and other stakeholders for a long-term period . The objective is to co-create and prototype services from ideas, and test them in the real-life

environment of the end-users. By utilizing this living labs approach, it is possible to embody the value of co-created ideas and concepts into services, when they enroll in society. 

The concept of living labs was first proposed in the United States in the 1990s by Lasher et al. (1991). This living lab was an experimental facility resembling a living environment, where researchers observed users trying new technology. Later, around 2005, the use of the term “living labs” was expanded in the Scandinavian countries. In this period, it became common to refer to living labs as a test bed for investigating and experimenting with new ICT services in the real-life settings and environment of the potential users.

Currently, this method is successfully used in processes that result in spatial changes of social and environmental importance that require working in complex processes involving many actors.

The phases of the LL work

Works within the LL group are commented on, broken down into the following phases:

1st phase of preparation, 2nd phase of diagnosis, 3rd phase of goal setting, 4th phase of co-creating solutions. Each phase distinguishes a different set of stakeholders involved in the LL group (in the initial phase, the repair partner must identify the stakeholders that have

interest in the issues of the project and adapting their role in individual phases).

They can start developing a stakeholder list with key stakeholders in the following cases: who are they? what are their goals? what can they bring to the project? It is recommended that the groups include representatives from several fields and between public and private exponents. Nevertheless, stakeholder selection can: be determined on the basis of the specific challenges identified in the subject area. 

The group that makes up the LL

The pre-laboratory phase is very important in order to build the strongest possible structure, properly built and functioning throughout the duration of the project. It is important to invite different competencies in definition of the group, stakeholders and area of the case study. So it is important to understand the whole process in a continuous and communicative way

an approach where flexibility in defining the underlying issues is key to learning from

the process itself.

A permanent group (organizing the LL work) a smaller group of a maximum of 10 people who

remains stable throughout the duration of the project and allows you to stay in control

groups to clearly assign responsibilities and focus on project delivery. This group should include a local coordinator. He is responsible for creating a friendly environment and for maintaining LL members – so that they carry out their tasks at those stages when they are needed

The content is the responsibility of the coordinators among university researchers operation and process management. It is very important to involve local institutions (for example local governments) who will ensure the implementation of development, as well as recipients of solutions (in the case of WATERDRIVE, these will be farmers and those implementing investments in agricultural areas). 

In the case of projects adapting to water management, in the case of LL selection, they may be: local governments, allocation of village councils – village administrators, village councils, scientific institutions, Water supervision, State forests, forest districts, non-governmental countries, farmers, rural areas.

HOW TO USE IT ONLINE  

Use good platform to organise interactive on-line meeting. The group should see each other and can communicate also. the Jamboard, Whiteboard or similar tool to collect the ideas 

RESOURCES NEEDED

SUITABLE   FOR  

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