At Home with Users: A Comparative View of Living Labs

Living Labs provide a ‘human-centric’ research approach for the design of new ICT artefacts. In Living Labs users participate over several design stages, providing insights into unexpected ICT use, co-creation and evaluation of new IT solutions. Although this approach is becoming more popular, there is little comparative and reflective work on its practical dynamics, problems and possibilities. In this study, we analyse two 4-year Living Lab projects in Lancaster, UK and Siegen, Germany within the domain of Social TV, and compare experiences. We focus on documenting the purposes, methods and user dynamics that affect the trajectory of such long-term research initiatives, focusing inter alia on the dynamics of researcher/user interaction and the developing issues of trust and managing expectations; emphasizing some often neglected ethical issues and the impact of users' individual characteristics and their role in the community dynamics of Living Labs.