Posts tagged living labs

CFP: CHI Workshop on Studying Technology in the Home (due Jan 11)

This CHI 2013 workshop will explore the methods used to study our interactions with technology in home contexts. We will share practices, identify key issues and potential for innovations in this space.

Position papers due January 11, 2013. Methods for Studying Technology in the Home, ACM CHI, April 27th, 2013, Palais de Congrès, Paris, France.

Full call: http://studyingthehome.wp.horizon.ac.uk/call-for-participation/

MORE – Technology is becoming ever more integral to our home lives, and visions such as ubiquitous computing, smart technologies and the Internet of Things represent a further stage of this development. However studying interactions and experiences in the home, and drawing understanding from this to inform design, is a substantial challenge for many researchers in Human-Computer Interaction and other disciplines. […]

We invite contributions from researchers working in areas including, but not restricted to:

  • Ethnographic or observational studies in homes, including dormitories and shared buildings
  • Approaches to exploring design through narratives, e.g. scenarios or user enactments
  • Prototype design and evaluation studies using field trials in homes, lab studies and smart home demonstrators built for research purposes
  • Living Lab and action research approaches to innovation related to the home
  • Automated approaches to capturing or analysing quantitative data about activities in the home
  • Application areas such as medical, assistive and e-health technologies, media and entertainment, smart appliances, smart grids, behaviour change, technologies for families, children and the elderly, home automation and many others where the home is a key context of use.

Aca-article: How to Co-Create Internet of Things-enabled Services for Smarter Cities

Paper on the “future of smart cities”.

Authors: Sauro Vicini, Sara Bellini, Alberto Sanna, eServices for Life and Health, Milano, Italy.

Published in SMART 2012: The First International Conference on Smart Systems, Devices and Technologies.

Other papers from the conference can be accessed here.

ABSTRACT - What is the future of Smart Cities? The San Raffaele Scientific Institute (HSR)’s eServices for Life and Health unit in Milan strives to explore and push the boundaries of the Smart City concept through the ideation and implementation of smart services. Often, these services achieve their highest potential through Internet of Things, which enable the constituents of these services (users, products, environments) to be interconnected. In order to examine the dynamics between users, service touchpoints and Internet of Things, HSR decided to develop a methodology within a Living Lab framework and set up the City of the Future Living Lab. The City of the Future Living Lab is both a virtual and real research environment and community and embodies a Smart City (indeed it contains a university, laboratories, a hospital, offices, shops, a supermarket, post-offices, streets, parks, a light rail train and bus service, numerous ICTs, etc.). It therefore has exposure to all users and consumers of a city. This paper focuses on delivering an overview of the Living Lab methodology and the way it brings together people, environments, ICT and Internet of Things in the creation of e-Services designed by and around the end user. The paper presents the methodology and tools implemented for all the phases of the Living Lab process and presents the case of Living Labs as user-driven open innovation ecosystems for services for future Smarter Cities.

Open access article: http://www.thinkmind.org/index.php?view=article&articleid=smart_2012_2_50_40077

CFP: Smart Applications for Smart Cities - New Approaches to Innovation (due May 1, 2012)

The Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce is looking for papers related to user centered approaches for innovation focusing on smart applications, aiming for a transformation towards smarter cities. Papers may cover smart applications for smart cities, addressing the participative design, implementation and validation aspects. We also solicit methodologically oriented papers on new, non-traditional approaches to citizen-centric innovation for smart cities.

Full paper submission May 1, 2012. Special issue of the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research. Guest Editors: Hans Schaffers, Carlo Ratti and Nicos Komninos.

Cities are complex, networked and continuously changing social ecosystems, shaped and transformed through the interaction of different interests and ambitions. Ensuring employment, sustainable development, inclusion and quality of life are important concerns. Infrastructures of cities, addressing these concerns, comprise a diversity of services such as healthcare, energy, education, environmental management, transportation and mobility, public safety. Increasingly these services are enabled by broadband infrastructures, wireless sensor networks, Internet-based networked applications, open data and open platforms. The concept of “smart cities” has emerged during the last few years to describe how investments in human and social capital and modern ICT infrastructure and e-services fuel sustainable growth and quality of life, enabled by a wise management of natural resources and through participative government (Caragliu, Del Bo, Nijkamp).

However truly smart – and real – cities are driven bottom up by citizens and organizations as innovators rather than by top down visions and plans that ignore the innovative potential of grassroots efforts, while governments should play the role of mediator bringing companies, research organizations and creative people to work in concert (Ratti, Townsend). The connection between smart environments and bottom-up innovation practices in the framework of cities and urban agglomerations is the main focus of the Special Issue. In particular we explore how collaboration platforms, embedded systems, open data, and semantic web technologies sustain a new round of innovation driven by the creativity of the population and the collective intelligence of collaboration.

The concept of Living Labs takes its point of departure in the consideration of people as innovators, and envisions environments of open and user driven innovation. As infrastructures and social networks become more advanced and widespread, the role of the Internet as an enabler of city services has become more important for urban development. Cities are increasingly assuming a critical role as drivers of innovation in areas such as health, inclusion, environment and business, a trend that will surely continue as more people and devices will become part of the Future Internet even than are connected today. Cities are increasingly becoming a living lab itself, a playground of innovation and transformation.

In this landscape, different traditionally separated streams of scientific research are coming together. New research challenges emerge in and across areas such as urban development and spatial planning, network infrastructure, technology platforms, services and applications, user behaviour, service engineering, innovation theory and urban economics. Also new methodological approaches to research and innovation emerge, such as design science, action research, living labs methodologies, testbed methods and tools, which need a more solid and empirically based foundation in theory as well as in practice. This special issue aims to advance our understanding of the emerging or already more mature research challenges at the cross point of the different areas mentioned. Such understanding will help academics and practitioners to explore new directions and generate knowledge and solutions towards smarter cities.

Subject Coverage
We specifically encourage papers related to user centered approaches for innovation focusing on smart applications, aiming for a transformation towards smarter cities. Papers may cover smart applications for smart cities, addressing the participative design, implementation and validation aspects. We also solicit methodologically oriented papers on new, non-traditional approaches to citizen-centric innovation for smart cities.

Particular topics to be addressed might include, but are not limited to the following:

  • User driven innovation facilitating participative urban development
  • Innovation Labs facilitating urban planning, development and transformation
  • Citizen participation in urban and regional planning and decision-making and governance
  • Internet-enabled infrastructures, services and networked applications for smart cities
  • Smart applications for innovation based on Internet of Things and Internet of Services paradigms
  • Wireless sensor networks and smart sensor-based networked applications in urban areas
  • Cloud computing, service models and smart city solutions enabling innovation
  • Standardisation and open interfaces of smart city systems, platforms and applications
  • Smart applications based on Semantic Web, Linked Data, Ontologies
  • Infrastructures and applications for new public urban services such as water, energy, healthcare, environmental monitoring, traffic management, intelligent transportation, e-government
  • Smart grids for utility infrastructures and services in urban areas
  • E-work and e-business applications
  • Design, implementation and evaluation of smart applications
  • Case studies of user driven innovation for smart(er) cities.

Notes for Intending Authors
We are seeking original manuscripts on conceptual and methodological issues related to qualitative research on e-marketing and online consumer behaviour, as well as papers which report on the results of qualitative empirical research in the field.

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Author guidelines can be found at http://www.jtaer.com/author_guidelines.doc. All submissions will be refereed by at least three reviewers. Submissions should be directed by email to hans.schaffers@aalto.fi with copy to ratti@mit.edu and komninos@urenio.org.

For more information, please visit the following web site: http://www.jtaer.com.

Important dates
Full paper submission: 1 May 2012
Notification of acceptance: 1 July 2012
Revised submission: 1 August 2012
Final acceptance notification: 15 August 2012
Camera ready version of paper: 15 September 2012
Publication: December 2012

Kudos to Per Linde for spotting this call.

CFP: Innovation by Collaboration and Entrepreneurial Partnerships, ICE conference. (June 2012, Munich)

Our community, consisting of academics, industrialists, managers, entrepreneurs and politicians, offers a big platform for knowledge transfer, scientific and applied discussions and active networking. Scientific results and practical contributions will be discussed in paper or workshop sessions. Key note speeches offer insights to relevant topics from science to policy to industry. Networking events provide the possibility of launching new projects and ensure a proactive knowledge transfer.

Full papers due February 15. Conference in Munich, Germany, 18-20 June 2012.

Conference Topics:
Paper or Workshop Submissions from academia, industry, policy or intermediary organizations should focus on the following areas.

Management of Innovation

  • Co-creation, Co-Innovation and Open Innovation
  • Collaborative Innovation Systems and Clusters
  • Innovation and Regional Innovation Systems
  • Living Labs

Entrepreneurship

  • Entrepreneurial Partnerships and Networked Businesses
  • Innovative Business Models
  • Legal Issues (IPR)
  • Knowledge Workers Productivity and Creativity

Concurrent Engineering and Product Development

  • Education in Engineering, Technology, and Innovation
  • Collaborative Engineering
  • Integrated Engineering of Products, Services & Organisations
  • Product Data and Product Life-cycle Management

Virtual Enterprises, Organisations and Communities

  • Factory of the Future
  • Collaborative Mobile Devices and Mobile Engineering
  • Knowledge Management, Representation, and Visualisation
  • Simulations and Serious Games for Collaboration & Learning
  • Virtual Collaborative Environments

Read more: http://www.ice-conference.org/Home/Call-for-papers.aspx

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Aca-article: Evaluating user involvement within living labs through the use of a domain landscape

This paper presents an empirical study on the use of the Living Lab research domain landscape as a tool for assessing the maturity level of Living Labs. The tool was used to assess 14 Finnish Living Labs. Domain map was found to be useful in this task and based on the results four categories of Living Labs were identified.

By: Juho Salminen, Suvi Konsti-Laakso, Marc Pallot, Brigitte Trousse, Bernard Senach

Abstract
Involving users in research, design and innovation processes constitutes a fast growing topic of interest for which approaches, methods and tools are abundantly described in the literature. A Living Lab is an open research and innovation ecosystem involving user communities towards co-creation principles where stakeholders apply various user involvement methods and tools according to their maturity level. Today, 212 Living Labs are members of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL). However, an appropriate assessment method of Living Labs maturity level still has to be created. A previous paper explores the domain landscape of Living Lab research (Pallot et al., 2010) that provides an opportunity to position Living Labs on the landscape map according to the research methods applied by stakeholders. This paper presents an empirical study on the use of the Living Lab research domain landscape as a tool for assessing the maturity level of Living Labs. The tool was used to assess 14 Finnish Living Labs. Domain map was found to be useful in this task and based on the results four categories of Living Labs were identified.

Keywords
Open Innovation, User Involvement, User Experience, User Centred Design, Living Lab, User Cocreation, Domain Landscape, Maturity Evaluation.

Access the full paper here.

Aca-article: Future Internet and Living Lab Research Domain Landscapes - Filling the Gap between Technology Push and Application Pull in the Context of Smart Cities

This paper explores the domain landscape of Living Lab and Future Internet research areas as well as the emerging Smart City landscape. It is believed that these landscapes provide valuable insights for articulating Living Labs between the technology push of Future Internet testbeds and the application pull of smart cities.

By: Marc PALLOT, Brigitte TROUSSE, Bernard SENACH, Hans SCHAFFERS, Nicos KOMNINOS

Abstract: While new paradigms such as Open Innovation and Web 2.0 as well as Living Labs operating as a User Centred Open Innovation Ecosystem promote a more proactive role of users in the R&D process, a number of existing methods for involving users are described in the literature, such as Lead User, User Driven Innovation, User Centred Design and User Created Content as well as User Co-Creation. Interestingly, the Internet evolves concurrently with research streams such as peer-to-peer, autonomous, content-centric and ad-hoc networking that have already demonstrated improvements on network performance and user experience. Peer-to-peer networking has demonstrated both the feasibility and economic potential for delivering services to millions of users. Cloud Computing is a more recent paradigm for transparently sharing among users scalable elastic resources over a limitless network. This paper explores the domain landscape of Living Lab and Future Internet research areas as well as the emerging Smart City landscape. It is believed that these landscapes provide valuable insights for articulating Living Labs between the technology push of Future Internet testbeds and the application pull of smart cities.

Conclusions
Technology push is still dominant in the actual research agenda. A recent Forrester survey states that smart city solutions are currently more vendor push than city government pull based. However, the survey points out that, “smart city solutions must start with the city not the smart”. The positive impact of available smart city solutions on European cities has not yet been demonstrated, nor have the necessary funding mechanisms and business models for their sustainability been developed. The domain landscapes of Living Lab, Future Internet research and emerging Smart Cities appear to be a source of insights for researchers in filling the gaps between technology push and application pull. They also help to reach a broader understanding of the Living Lab movement towards more participative design for Future Internet and Smart City innovation ecosystems. In this context, the Future Internet represents the technology push, Smart Cities represent the application pull and Living Labs form the exploratory and participative playground in between the FI technology and Smart Cities’ applications. Future Internet research and experimentation represents a technology-oriented and longer term contribution. Cities provide a potentially attractive testing and validating environment. However, as shown above, a wide gap exists between the technology orientation of Future Internet research and citizens’ expectations. Hence, the concept of open and user-driven innovation ecosystem, such as the Living Lab approach, brings the necessary combination level of digital skills, creativity and innovation methods that properly bridge the gap between technology push and Application pull. Finally, a roadmap towards Smart Cities, under refinement, will provide the necessary framework and methods for successfully connecting push and pull developments

Access the full article here, open access.

Refer also to the article “Is there a Need for a Cloud Platform for European Smart Cities” from the same conference proceedings.

eChallenges e-2011 Conference Proceedings; Paul Cunningham and Miriam Cunningham (Eds); IIMC International Information Management Corporation, 2011; ISBN: 978-1-905824-27-4