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Through this study, we seek to understand the impact of the use of the living lab approach on product and business development in an eHealth accelerator. In the case accelerator, 20 startups developed innovative products atop the European FIWARE Future Internet technology platform. The novel design element of the case accelerator was the use of the living lab approach that was included for the purpose of engaging end users in the development and testing of new product prototypes. Our main result is that the living lab approach provided added value to participating companies and resulted in changes in their product development and marketing strategies. Overall, the case accelerator and the use of the living lab approach had a significant impact on the development, growth, and market success of the companies. Based on the results of the case accelerator, we propose the generic accelerator model presented by Pauwels and co-authors in 2016 to be extended with a new design element, the living lab approach.

This paper introduces an augmented reality application, AR PATIO, which was developed for an existing user involvement tool that is a part of a living lab. Augmented reality contents can be projected on-site to visualize change in a comprehensible and visual way. The aim of our application is to provide new methods for involving citizens in the innovation, co-creation, and evaluation of services and products in a living lab context. Our solution gives users the possibility to express their reactions by leaving location-based comments and feedback when using augmented reality. AR PATIO was evaluated as a part of a bigger user-experience study in which virtual reality and mobile clients were also tested. However, in this paper, we focus on the results from an AR use case. According to our UX study with 14 participants, AR PATIO created a positive experience. It was regarded as empowering, playful, innovative, and useful.

Involving citizens in the development activities of a company or public sector is getting more and more important to be able to design e.g. services, products, and city plans that people like and want to use. To be able to develop online user communities that support company or public sector user research needs, it is important to focus on customer perceptions of online user communities. This paper addresses customer perceptions of crowdsourcing and citizen participation through an online user community. Empirical data was collected in two phases: through a pre-study containing interviews and an online survey with 52 participants in total and a follow-up interview for seven selected informants after using an online user community for citizen involvement in the development activity. Several real-life citizen involvement activities conducted through the case online user community are presented in the paper. Findings show that the online user involvement platform PATIO's customers have experienced it as an easy, fast, and cost-effective way to involve citizens in different development activities. Findings also suggest that an online user involvement platform and user community allows collecting rich feedback because of an easy access to target end-users. The results of the study contribute to the scientific discussion on crowdsourcing, citizen participation and living labs, and the development of efficient online tools in this context.

This paper investigates the use of various user-driven methods in the development of public services. As an example, the paper presents a case where citizens and employees were brought together to identify development needs for remote-enabled public services. User-driven methods provided by a local Living Lab were used to solve the encountered challenges. The outcome of this study indicates that use of multiple methods ensures comprehensive and reliable results as well as deep insight of service usage, thereby resulting in usable, useful and desirable public service.