Mulder, I. & Stappers, P.J. Co-creating in practice: results and challenges. Presented at the 15th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising: ICE 2009, Leiden, The Netherlands, 22 – 24 June 2009.

1. ICE 2009, the 15th international Conference on Concurrent Enterprising, 22-24 June 2009, Leiden, the Netherlands
co-creating in practice:
results and challenges
Session 2-1: Collaborative Innovation (1) 1

2. need for user-centric innovation
• only one out of 3000 product ideas makes it on the
market, meaning that there are hundreds of
unsuccessful ICT products behind every success
• 75% of all users find their ICT tools more stressing
than relaxing
• user-centric development and validation can play an
important role in speeding up effectively innovation
processes through addressing actual user needs
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3. Living Labs as answer to
• implement user-driven open innovation
• get a better understanding in what triggers
innovations and which innovations proof to be
successful in different contexts
• bring the users early into the creative process
• bridge the innovation gap between technology
development and the uptake of new products and
services
• allow for early assessment of the socio-economic
implications
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4. Living Labs open opportunities
to get users involved,
however,
the concept does not explain
how to involve motivated users?
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5. collaborative innovation
• The Living Lab initiative stresses the
collaborative nature of modern product
and technology development.
• Collaborative innovation plays a part on two levels.
1. between Living Labs
2. within each lab
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6. co-creative Living Labs
• European Network of Living Labs as one platform for
collaborative and co-creative innovation
• where users are involved and contribute to the
innovation process
• to ensure that common methodologies are developed
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7. Living Labs Harmonization Cube
• useful technique enabling definition of
a shared reference of methods and tools
• it represents the most important perspectives
• it also specifies bridges between existing Living Labs
• it helps the different Living Labs
• to learn from each other
• benchmark the validation of user behaviour studies
exchange best practices
• and interconnect existing Living Labs
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9. co-creation in Living Labs
• core service of a Living Lab is to facilitate
co-creation of a product, service, or application
• identification of methods and tools that integrate
end-users and other stakeholders
• mapped to various stages of an innovation process
• each phase enables co-creation with different
methods and tools
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10. taxonomy of methods and tools
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11. about co-creation in Living Labs
• overall, mainly traditional methods used
• methods and tools used are very heterogeneous,
making it hard to compare results across the Living
Lab sites
• Living Labs do not currently benefit from the
promising Living Lab methodology that comes close to
the user as well as make use of the potential of Living
Labs as a methodology to get richer insights in what
drives people
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12. co-creation is about participation
• user participation is often after-the-fact testing
• users can react to a concept prototype in a
demonstration, a focus group or in a usability test
• earlier phases are mostly conducted within the lab or
company, or based on literature study
• emphasis is put on ‘demonstrators’
• involving users in earlier phases is important to ensure
that developed concepts of products and services fit into
target groups’ daily lives
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13. user concerns move to the front…
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14. co-creation is about context
• building an understanding of the context of product use
• who, where, what, when, how, and
why which surrounds the product
• This fuller understanding of the context is even more
necessary as current product and service design
increasingly address complex interactions between users,
products, services, and infrastructure, with increasing
opportunities for mistakes due to ‘blind spots’ in
the development team
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15. contextmapping
1. generative activity
having people create artefacts as a way to
stimulate observation, reflection, and discussion
2. sensitizing
letting participants go through a process of
reflection over several days or weeks, in order to
deepen their insights
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16. 16

17. contextmapping
• Both tools of expression and time for reflection are
needed to work the participating user into the ‘expert
of their experience’ and to have users contribute the
Living Labs process
• This goes far beyond current practice of
demonstration-and-reaction, both in the amount
of time and commitment that is invested from all
parties as well as in the depth and breadth of
results that can be harvested from that
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18. co-creation is hot, co-creating is limited
• In industry, product- and concept-testing are becoming
commonplace.
• However, techniques to involve end-users in the idea
generation phases are not often applied in practice
• partly due to technology push
• part because existing methods such as (design)
ethnography are expensive and require changes in
current product development processes
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19. context is changing...
• (mainly academic) projects have shown the viability
and value of use-inspired approaches and
have delivered new, appropriate methods.
• new methods have also found their way into large
(US) industries such as Microsoft
• co-creation techniques are also finding their way into
education and consequently – through the new
generation of designers – into practice
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20. challenges for co-creation
• most existing Living Labs don’t exploit the full potential
of a community-driven open innovation approach (yet)
• current practices largely emphasise the Lab part,
a predominant use of traditional methods for evaluation
• rather than the Living part,
i.e., methods of participation and co-creation
• how can current methods stressing participation and
co-creation strengthen Living Lab practices?
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21. role of ‘user’ is changing
Liz Sanders (2000)
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22. 22

23. user as co-creator
• the challenge to keep Living Labs living is:
• involving active users by making use of generative
techniques
• practicing a ‘user as co-creator’ approach
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24. community-driven innovation as the
new way of product development
• technology push
technological tricks in boxes, with a button to start
their use
• market pull
caters only to needs people are explicitly aware of
The competition on user qualities requests a third force:
• contextual push – people insights push
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25. three forces of new product
development
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26. in sum, current Living Lab practices
• reactive users rather than users as active co-creators
• not exemplary in demonstrating the added value of a
Living Lab over traditional user-centric methodologies
• In order to have the Living Lab methodology growing
to maturity
• it is crucial to awake the living part by making
use of its infrastructure
• and by continuously evaluating in all phases, thus
also during use and in-situ
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27. living methodologies
• to come close to the user and his rich experiences
• and so, capturing rich experiences and social dynamics
of everyday life
• to include the fuzzy front end to decipher invaluable
insights
• Living methodologies such as generative tools and
contextmapping techniques proved to be
successful for that as well
• in this way Living Labs make far better use of the
promised ecological validity
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28. thank you!
More info: www.contextmapping.com
Email: mulderi@acm.org
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