Amsterdam Living Lab: a new reality in mind
Challenge for the future is to design the experience with a strong focus and understanding of the fickle user. Technical improvements are often not the most determining factor for success of failure. Social aspects and experience are decisive in the outcome of new introductions. More and more content is produced by consumers themselves. Services consist of complex combinations of other services, linked together through advanced ICT, assembled and configured by users themselves. This all leads to the conclusion that design and develop processes must be redesigned with the new realities in mind.
The Amsterdam Living Lab is the approach to establish a European Center for design and development of products and services in the area of ICT and new media. This is done by a strong focus on tools, methodologies and knowledge on measuring and understanding behavior and experience. And by creating processes with a strong link between design and understanding real life behavior of users. By creating this knowledge and test infrastructure Amsterdam can increase its position as the place to be for design and development of the experience. Understanding users and connecting to designers.
To take this further, a strong investment needs to be done in measuring real life behavior:
- Development of tooling to be able to measure behavior and experience of people in real life. Examples are mobile applications measuring location, movement and contacts and also software libraries to integrate in other applications
- Knowledge on what data is needed for what purposes and how to interpret this data and how to use it in design processes
- Establishment of an ecosystem of companies, government and knowledge institutions to drive further development and use of these methods and tools in real design processes
Focus is on building a sustainable company that will deliver services on measuring behavior and experience with strong ties in the academic community and a firm base in commercial clients. Main focus areas are mobility, New Media and Design, Environmental Durability en Social Cohesion.
First projects are underway
The Amsterdam Living Lab is based in a many previous and current projects already underway. Some examples are:
- Several projects around measuring user behavior in the context of European projects like Mobilife, Contextwatcher and IYOUIT.eu
- FabLab as a transforming technology for SME’s.
- Access to cultural heritage by tourists in an integrated (mobile, non-mobile) way
- VOD-casting on university, getting to understand how user generated content can take a new generation students a step further.
- Large scale mobility management by influencing drivers through information and pricing and thereby preventing traffic congestion
- Better Energy efficiency by creating more awareness with users on the use of energy through intelligent surroundings and ubiquitous feedback
- The creation of change encounters between people living in the same city area and thereby re-enforcing the social fabric of society with the help of digital media and ubiquitous communication
In order to build on these projects and strengthen the Living Lab approach the following phases can be seen for the next three years:
- Exploration phase of a little over one year to collect current state of art in measuring real life and making the processes to collect, interpret and use data in design processes feasible. For this a network of companies, government and academics is formed. Also the cooperation is sought with other living lab environments in Europe will be done. In this phase the company involvement is growing, also financially
- During the consolidation phase of one year a balance is found between the academic goals and the company involvement. The network of (financially and by content) contributing companies is expanded as they are using the methods and tools in the design and introduction of their products and services.
- In the institutional phase the living lab is separated in a strictly commercial company focused on supporting companies in their product introductions and an academic part focused on development of new state of art approaches. Of course there will be strong ties.
A strong connection exists towards Europa with other Living Lab initiatives. Amsterdam Living Lab is connected to the policy council of the European Network of Living Labs and people of ALL are also involved in the i2Cat Living Lab in Barcelona and have close ties to Forum Virium in Helsinki. Other involved cities are Rome, Stockholm, Paris and Brussels. From the European Committee a keen interest is in the leading role Amsterdam is willing to play in the Living Lab movement.
Credits
Amsterdam Living Lab is kindly supported by the city of Amsterdam, the ministry of Economic Affairs, the Stadsregio Amsterdam and the province of Noord-Holland.
Amsterdam Living Lab is an initiative of the Amsterdam Innovation Motor (AIM) and is a cooperation of AIM, Telematica Instituut, University of Amsterdam, Hogeschool van Amsterdam and Waag Society. In the current projects several companies are involved like: IBM, Accenture, NUON, Logica and Cisco.