Living Lab: A Methodology between User-Centred Design and Participatory Design

Living Labs have received limited attention in the literature despite their diffusion throughout Europe and recent interest from policy makers. This limited attention is linked to the newness of the phenomenon, the high heterogeneity of cases and the consequent lack of definitions and acknowledged frameworks for scholarly analyses. In this work, we argue that the originality of the Living Lab phenomenon resides in the introduction of a new methodology. Using an analysis of the literature and case studies, we propose a new definition, position this methodology among other design methodologies and highlight its peculiarities. We underline the co-creative potentialities, the awareness of users and the real-life settings. Furthermore, our case-based research allows us to identify four different specifications for this methodology, and therefore four different types of Living Labs, based on the openness of the user involvement and the adopted platform technology.