Contextuality and Co-Creation Matter: A Qualitative Case Study Comparison of Living Lab Concepts in Urban Research

Abstract

Living labs have become an established tool for testing and developing new products or services with users in real-life environments (see Leminen et al., 2012; Veeckman et al., 2013). They were also introduced into urban research agendas by the Finnish European Union Presidency in 2006. Since then, research programmes have been using living labs as a methodological tool to connect research to public and private stakeholders with citizens in order to co-create and co-design products and services to improve the quality of life in cities (Edwards-Schachter et al., 2012; Pascu & Van Lieshout, 2009). Although projects and approaches to urban living labs differ widely, the benefits lie in user integration and the use of results to develop need-based products and services that can be implemented into the living environments of citizens. As Schuurman (2015) points out, the key components of living labs are user involvement and user co-creation. Contrary to the predominately technology-centred living lab concepts, urban living labs add not only the urban component to the conceptual design, but also a range of topics including societal, political, and technological questions. As a result, a more nuanced understanding of living lab design in diverging research contexts is necessary to provide adequate frameworks in diverging fields of research.