Taking Real-Life Seriously: An Approach to Decomposing Context Beyond “Environment” in Living Labs

Abstract

The maturity of living labs has grown over the years and researchers have developed a uniform definition by emphasizing the multi-method and real-life, contextual approach. The latter predominantly focuses on the in situ use of a product during field trials where users are observed in their everyday life. Researchers thus recognize the importance of context in living labs, but do not provide adequate insights into how context can be taken into consideration. Therefore, the contribution of this article is twofold. By means of a case study, we show how field trials can be evaluated in a more structural way to cover all dimensions of context and how this same framework can be used to evaluate context in the front end of design. This framework implies that living lab researchers are no longer dependent on the technological readiness level of a product to evaluate all dimensions of context. By using the proposed framework, living lab researchers can improve the overall effectiveness of methods used to gather and analyze data in a living lab project.