Design as a driver of user-centred innovation contributes to getting good ideas to market. It enhances agile and focused product and service development … It facilitates the development of better, transparent and more effective public services and contributes to social innovation, thereby raising the quality of life for all citizens of Europe. And for complex societal problems, design offers people-centred approaches that can achieve better solutions.
Design for Growth and Prosperity (2012)
The European Union has identified innovation as a key driver behind business competitiveness and responsive governance. However, innovation in and of itself may not be sufficient to help businesses bring new products to market and to help governments shape public services that meet the real needs of citizens. The Integrating Design for All in Living Labs (IDeALL) project sought to identify and test methodologies for designing with users in real-life settings. The results of the experiments showed how different methodologies can be applied in different contexts, helping to provide solutions to societal issues and to create products and services that genuinely meet user requirements. In this article, we describe the methodologies used in the IDeALL project and provide examples of the project's experiments and case studies across four main areas: i) services; ii) health and social care; iii) information and communication technology; and iv) urban design.
Innovation is often promoted as essential to the prosperity and indeed survival of European economies in global markets, as exemplified at a policy level by the European Commission’s Innovation Union programme. With the rise of emerging economies, the Commission warns that its member countries may face chronic decline unless they can differentiate themselves through advances brought about by innovation. Yet, even though it may be tempting to view innovation as a magic solution, innovation in and of itself may not have a universally beneficial impact, as Rufo Quintavalle (2014) argues in his article titled "Food Doesn't Grow in Silicon Valleys".
On the macro-level, funding for research and development in Europe has not necessarily translated into innovation uptake in Europe (Curley & Salemin, 2013). On the micro-level, even in purely market terms, innovation is no guarantee of the success of a product or service, as Mulder (2012) has shown in this publication. Indeed, Gournville (2005) finds that, although "Innovation is crucial to the long-term success of many firms", "highly innovative products… fail at a greater rate than less innovative products", a phenomenon which he attributes to the need for a fundamental behaviour change that the adoption of such products requires.
Accordingly, we ask:
- How can companies lead the innovation charge while mitigating the risks of launching new products?
- How can public services evolve in such a way that they empower citizens without leaving any one group behind?
- How can design be a factor of change while leading innovation to the market?
In this article, we describe the Integrating Design for All in Living Labs (IDeALL) project, which aims to answer these questions. First, we describe how the European Union has begun to consider the discipline of design as a driver of innovation, and then we briefly explain two of the main themes of the project: design for all and living labs. Next, we explain the rationale behind the project and give examples of the methodologies collated and compared according to the different criteria used to classify them. We then provide examples and findings of some of the project's experiments and case studies across four main areas: i) services; ii) health and social care; iii) information and communication technology (ICT); and iv) urban design. Finally, we suggest further possible applications of these methodologies by other businesses and public-sector bodies.
Design as a Driver of Innovation
The European Commission has begun to address these questions at policy level in a number of ways, including a focus on non-tech