Paper short abstract:

This longitudinal case study of a floor-monitoring system for elderly care investigates maturing relationship between technology developers and users during and after a four-year living lab project. The study focuses on multi-stakeholder learning, conflict management, and innovation intermediaries.

Paper long abstract:

Living lab environments are often promoted as a way to engage private companies, citizens, researchers, and public organisations in mutually beneficial learning. They are open-ended, real-life, and sustained co-design arrangements.

This longitudinal case study follows the biography of a floor monitoring system for elderly care - the smart floor - and maturing of user-developer collaboration during and after living lab project. The data consists of documents and interviews.

The focus is on learning between different stakeholders and challenges that rise in a setting where different professional identities, organisational cultures, values, and goals are at play. The project faced power games between the stakeholders and end-users were reluctant to participate in the technology development, but nevertheless project workers managed to prevent the network from falling apart.

The study suggests that multi-stakeholder learning in a living lab cannot be presumed or taken for granted, but learning for interaction is needed before learning in interaction is possible. In the smart floor case intermediary actors played pivotal role in conflict resolution and facilitation of learning.

The current living lab literature recognises the importance and multifacetedness of intermediary actors, but does not shed light on the work they do at a more practical level. With the longitudinal perspective the study seeks to capture the maturing of everyday challenges of the co-design project and work tasks of the innovation intermediaries, who seek to tackle these challenges.