Future Workspaces applies a Living Lab approach in its pilots. This means that, in contrast to traditional research approaches, the experiments are performed at the customer site: employees do not have to come to a lab to experiment with new technologies, the experiment takes place in their normal work setting and as part of their normal work activities. This way, a Living Lab becomes a co-creation environment for human-centric research and innovation.

A Living Lab experiment typically consists of 5 steps, as illustrated in the figure above:

1. We typically work demand-driven: a team or a team leader has signalled a need. As a first step, we perform our own observations and analysis of the current working practices of the team. This is done via interviews, working at the customer site and joining customer meetings. As a result, we gain insight in the real issues (which are sometimes different from the initialy indicated bottlenecks), we discover possibilities for improvement and understand the playing field for our interventions.
2. We continue by planning the intervention. Based on our observations and analysis we derive what (technology) intervention may be beneficial and a strategy for executing that intervention. Given that we use short cycles to experiment, we typically use a small group of team members to perform the experiment with. As part of this phase, we also identify candidates for the experiment.
3. We execute the intervention. Typically this means that we let a small group of team members work with an innovative technology as part of their normal work. For instance, in a process where they would normally create a document for themselves to gather information on a topic, we would set up a wiki where they would have to gather the information instead.
4. We collect and share experiences and good practice. We interview and observe team members to gather their experiences and good practices. Additionally, we organise a workshop with the team members involved in the experiment to share experiences and good practices. Typically, we also make sure the team members have some channel (forum, blog, wiki page) during the experiment where they can exchange tips and communicate with us for help.
5. We evaluate the intervention: What are the (perceived) benefits? What are the (perceived) costs (e.g., extra work people have to do)? How much was the technology used? For what purposes what it used? Does it fit their working practices? Does it fit their organizational culture? Based on the evaluation we advise the team about next steps.

In Future Workspaces, we use very short cycles of experimenting. Although we do extensive interviews and observations beforehand at the customer site, an actual cycle of an experiment takes 4 to 6 weeks. This requires serious commitment from the team, not just as passive test subjects, but as active participants in the experiment. Also, it means we have to be frequently at the customer site.

Tags: experiment, living lab, strategy

Dit item is geplaatst door external author op 24 December 2008 om 17:34 in EN, instruments, knowledge base. Je kunt een reactie achterlaten, of een trackback op je eigen website opnemen.