vations to market (Aragall and Montaña, 2012; Steinfeld and Maisel, 2012). Steinfeld and Maisel suggest that universal design can help companies bridge the gap between innovations brought about by research, such as the synthesis of a new material, to a successful product launch through a holistic development approach that focuses on the end user; this point is also illustrated in IDeALL experiment with the company Lékué, as discussed below.
The emergence of living labs has provided a mechanism for precisely this kind of multidisciplinary, co-creative approach, allowing companies to test products with users and public bodies to try new ways of providing services. Living labs allow design for all to make the logical step from user-centred design to user-driven design. Living labs generate not only new methodologies but also help to organize complex communities (e.g., including universities, local authorities, companies, and citizens) in co-designing solutions for complex problems. In that sense, living labs allow the design professionals to work with a co-design perspective, thereby enabling a more strategic approach that goes beyond the traditional client-by-client model. As Mulder (2012) and others suggest, by providing a real-life environment for the co-creation and evaluation of innovations, living labs allow complex problems to be identified and they enable the devlopment of solutions that will ultimately be more acceptable to a range of end users. Furthermore, thanks to new technologies and manufacturing methods, more channels for co-creation and evaluation have been made possible, as many commentators have noted, including the European Design Leadership Board in Design for Growth and Prosperity. However, the ability of living labs to facilitate user-driven design has not yet been fully embraced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up 99% of businesses in the European Union (European Commission, 2013), or by public bodies who may be intrigued by Government 2.0 but are wary of the risks involved in changing their ways of operating.
Integrating Design for All in Living Labs
The Integrating Design for All in Living Labs (IDeALL) project was developed as a response to this challenge. One of six projects co-financed under the European Commission’s Design-Driven Innovation programme, it aimed to bring the design and living lab communities closer together and to identify within these communities the best ways to innovate with users in different contexts. Led by the Cité du design in France, itself a design centre and living lab, the project consortium included design centres, living labs, educational institutions, and research centres, as well as the European Society of Concurrent Enterprising Network and the European Network of Living Labs. Among the living labs in the consortium and its supporting community were examples of the different types analysed by Leminen, Westerlund, and Nyström (2012) in this journal.
Responding to Vérilhac, Pallot, and Aragall's (2012) identification of "the lack of comparative studies on design methods involving users" as one of the barriers to "a more integrating approach of methods that could be used in a [living lab]", a comparative analysis of user-centred design methodologies was undertaken. The methodologies were compared using the following criteria:
- The phase of the development process (research/ideation/prototyping/evaluation)
- The duration of the methodology (short/medium/long)
- The user level of involvement (low/medium/high)
This analysis showed how the methodologies might be useful in different contexts according to different requirements and restrictions, and methodologies can be searched by these criteria on the IDeALL website. For example, a company wishing to develop a service might use the Service Innovation Corner methodology used by the University of Lapland or the Service Innovation and Design methodology from Laurea University of Applied Science. A company wishing to design and prototype a new product might use the Cité du design’s Laboratoire des U