Living labs: control bought at the price of a setting that participates

A living lab is the compromise a field study makes when it cannot have a real setting and a controlled one at once. It buys control while keeping a recognisable setting, and it pays twice. The setting is instrumented until it is no longer quite the place it was. Its inhabitants become participants observed on the study's terms. This seventh of ten units prices the compromise: what a laboratory gains when it keeps a recognisable setting, and who carries the cost.

The term then moved into innovation research, where a living lab became a network, an organisation or a method rather than a building.

A house built so that people could be observed in it

Kidd and colleagues (1999) describe the Aware Home at Georgia Tech as a house designed from the outset to be a living laboratory for ubiquitous computing. It was to hold two identical living spaces, over a shared basement with a control room. Each space had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room and a laundry room.

Two living floors allow controlled experiments and let inhabitants live on one floor while the other is used for prototyping (Kidd et al., 1999). The first occupants were expected to be students, and the longer-term aim a family or elderly occupants, because they would give more realistic feedback.

What the instrumentation buys is observation with nobody in the room

Intille and colleagues (2005) introduced the PlaceLab as a living laboratory for ubiquitous technologies in home settings, a complement to home ethnography and laboratory studies. The case rests on the limits of both: simulated rooms constrain behaviour, and portable sensors in real homes instrument only part of the environment.

Intille and colleagues (2006) describe an apartment-scale live-in laboratory of one thousand square feet, opened in July 2004 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its fifteen cabinetry components each carried up to 30 sensors. The instrumentation assumes a resident who can walk unaided through every room. The December 2005 installation included 80 wired switches, 125 wireless object movement sensors, nine infrared cameras, nine colour cameras and 18 microphones.

The authors state that it was, to their knowledge, the first living laboratory to run multi-day studies with no or extremely limited face-to-face interaction (Intille et al., 2006).

The price is written into the design

The authors grant the familiar criticism directly. Requiring people to move out of their own homes reduces the complexity of the setting and may change the participant's behaviour, and they agree (Intille et al., 2006). The live-in laboratory is offered as a compromise, such as having someone move into a home that is not their own.

The inhabitants are participants, and the paperwork follows them. Volunteers were aged 35 to 60 and paid about 25 US dollars a day. They were told where every sensor was, could delete segments before release, and visitors had to sign consent forms. One participant brought in her bedspread, placemats and eventually her own coffee table, and asked for audio from personal calls to be removed (Intille et al., 2006). Consent at home runs from the front door to the furniture.

The facility outlives the study. Kientz and colleagues (2008) describe the Aware Home Research Initiative as a continuing programme, active since 1998, that evaluates user experiences across health, education and entertainment.

The term leaves the building

Ballon and Schuurman (2015) set out the concept's predecessors from the 1970s onwards, including cooperative design, social experiments, digital city initiatives and home labs. They compare them with the current European definition.

Dell'Era and Landoni (2014) find the originality in a methodology rather than a place, positioning the living lab between user-centred and participatory design. Leminen, Westerlund and Nystrom (2012) treat living labs as networks. From 103 interviews in 26 labs between 2007 and 2011, they derive four types distinguished by which actor leads.

Almirall, Lee and Wareham (2012) place living labs in the middle ground of user involvement. That middle ground is driven by users as co-creators on equal grounds, and by experimentation in real-world settings.

Once the inhabitant is a co-creator, the setting is a participant

Almirall and colleagues (2012) put users as co-creators on equal grounds with the other participants. In a building-based lab the same move works differently. The resident supplies the realism researchers cannot simulate (Kidd et al., 1999), and visitors must be enrolled before they enter (Intille et al., 2006).

That involvement is paid for by the people who provide it. Participants gave up their own homes for days or weeks for about 25 US dollars a day. The design let them keep control of their data (Intille et al., 2006). That this makes them parties with claims on the result is an inference from the design, not a measurement.

Stahlbrost and Kareborn give a measured instance of why people take part. They studied an innovation intermediary community. They found that participation motivation varied with the type of community and the type of technology adoption. Learning was an important motive for contributing (Stahlbrost and Kareborn, 2011). A living lab that recruits users as co-creators therefore draws on a motive the lab does not control. What the case does not show is the cost side. It reports what draws users in, not what the involvement takes out of them. It is also an innovation community rather than a health living lab.

The bargain pays, though the payment cannot be attributed

The question is whether the arrangement produces something a cheaper method would not. Schuurman, De Marez and Ballon (2016) compared 27 projects run by iMinds Living Labs for small and medium-sized enterprises between 2011 and 2015. A real-life intervention and a multi-method approach increased the chance of actionable user contributions, and projects yielded most value when moving from concept towards prototype.

Attribution is harder. Ballon, Van Hoed and Schuurman (2018) built an impact evaluation, because the pragmatic nature of living labs hinders impact evaluation. They report a contribution to significant economic effects for participants, and recommend methodological changes.

The review literature leaves the question open. Hossain, Leminen and Westerlund (2019) reviewed 114 articles. The literature treats living labs as landscapes, real-life environments and methodologies. It lists temporality, governance, user recruitment and unpredictable outcomes among their challenges.

Contested question: a place, a network or a method?

The first disagreement is what a living lab is. The place position is the oldest. Kidd and colleagues (1999) and Intille and colleagues (2005, 2006) treat it as an instrumented setting whose value is observation without a researcher present. The network position is Leminen and colleagues (2012) and Almirall and colleagues (2012). The methodology position is Dell'Era and Landoni (2014) and Schuurman and colleagues (2016). Hossain and colleagues (2019) document that all three readings are current.

The second disagreement is whether participation is the product or the disturbance. Schuurman and colleagues (2016) and Ballon and colleagues (2018) treat user involvement as the mechanism that produces the contribution, and try to measure it. The building-based work records the opposite risk: a simplified setting may change the behaviour observed, a limitation the PlaceLab authors accept (Intille et al., 2006).

The place position rests on building-based field studies (Intille et al., 2006), the network position on 103 interviews across 26 labs (Leminen et al., 2012), and the methodology position on a comparison of 27 projects (Schuurman et al., 2016). What would settle the first is a comparison rather than another definition: run one intervention through a building-based lab and through a network-facilitated deployment in people's own homes, and report which arrangement produced it and at what cost (Veeckman et al., 2013; Ballon et al., 2018). While the dispute is open, state which reading a study uses and who carries the risk. The strongest objection is that a resident co-creator changes the setting, so a living lab cannot measure the effect it exists to explain.

Where the area is heading

The direction of travel is towards standardising the method while the setting keeps participating. Rosa and colleagues (2026) analyse the six living labs of the RESOLVE-Health programme. They propose a three-phase framework of conceptualisation, concretion and specialisation to compensate for the lack of a standardised methodology.

Santonen and colleagues (2024) turn expert opinion into a specified value proposition with named categories and items. Hossain and colleagues (2019) supply the reason both remain incomplete. A literature that treats the living lab as a place, a network and a method at once has no common denominator against which either can be scored.

The sources this unit rests on

Each note states what the cited document did and found. Titles are in British spelling, and identifiers were checked against registered metadata on 2 November 2026.

• Kidd, C. D. et al. (1999). The Aware Home: a living laboratory for ubiquitous computing research. doi:10.1007/10705432_17 Describes the Aware Home under construction at Georgia Tech, with two identical living spaces over a shared basement and control room. The two floors allow controlled experiments and let inhabitants live on one floor while the other is used for prototyping.
• Intille, S. S. et al. (2005). A living laboratory for the design and evaluation of ubiquitous computing technologies. doi:10.1145/1056808.1057062 Introduces the PlaceLab as a living laboratory for ubiquitous technologies in home settings, a complement to home ethnography and to laboratory studies. The case rests on the limits of both: simulated rooms constrain behaviour, and portable sensors in real homes instrument only part of the environment.
• Intille, S. S. et al. (2006). Using a live-in laboratory for ubiquitous computing research. doi:10.1007/11748625_22 Reports the design and operation of the PlaceLab, an apartment-scale live-in laboratory opened in July 2004 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with sensors built into the cabinetry and no researcher on site. Volunteers lived there for days or weeks at about 25 US dollars a day, and the authors accept that the move makes the setting simpler and may change behaviour.
• Kientz, J. A. et al. (2008). The Georgia Tech aware home. doi:10.1145/1358628.1358911 Describes the Aware Home Research Initiative as a continuing programme, active since 1998, that simulates and evaluates user experiences in health, education, entertainment and usable security. It shows the living lab as shared infrastructure that outlives any single study.
• Ballon, P. and Schuurman, D. (2015). Living labs: concepts, tools and cases. doi:10.1108/info-04-2015-0024 Introduces the living lab concept by setting out its predecessors from the 1970s onwards, including cooperative design, social experiments, digital city initiatives and home labs, and compares them with the current European definition. Documenting that many traditions behind one label is the unit's evidence that the term carries less definition than its users assume.
• Dell'Era, C. and Landoni, P. (2014). Living Lab: a methodology between user-centred design and participatory design. doi:10.1111/caim.12061 Argues that the originality of the living lab lies in a methodology rather than a place, positioned between user-centred and participatory design. It identifies four specifications according to the openness of user involvement and the platform technology adopted.
• Leminen, S., Westerlund, M. and Nystrom, A. G. (2012). Living Labs as open-innovation networks. doi:10.22215/timreview/602 Draws on 103 semi-structured interviews with participants in 26 living labs in Finland, Sweden, Spain and South Africa between 2007 and 2011. It derives four types, utilizer-driven, enabler-driven, provider-driven and user-driven, distinguished by the actor that leads, and concludes that a living lab is a network rather than a place.
• Almirall, E., Lee, M. and Wareham, J. (2012). Mapping living labs in the landscape of innovation methodologies. doi:10.22215/timreview/603 Compared 48 candidate organisations from the European Network of Living Labs and interviewed 38 managers and researchers across 26 of them. It places living labs in the middle ground of user involvement, driven by users as co-creators on equal grounds and by experimentation in real-world settings.
• Veeckman, C. et al. (2013). Linking living lab characteristics and their outcomes: towards a conceptual framework. doi:10.22215/timreview/748 Starts from the absence of a consistent definition and studies three living labs in Belgium and one in Finland. It proposes eleven characteristics across environment, approach and outcome, arguing that they must be linked to outcomes rather than only described.
• Schuurman, D., De Marez, L. and Ballon, P. (2016). The impact of living lab methodology on open innovation contributions and outcomes. doi:10.22215/timreview/956 Compared 27 projects run by iMinds Living Labs for small firms between 2011 and 2015. A real-life intervention and a multi-method approach increased the chance of actionable user contributions, and projects yielded most value when moving from concept towards prototype.
• Ballon, P., Van Hoed, M. and Schuurman, D. (2018). The effectiveness of involving users in digital innovation: measuring the impact of living labs. doi:10.1016/j.tele.2018.02.003 Builds and applies an impact evaluation for living labs, motivated by the finding that their pragmatic nature hinders impact evaluation. It reports a contribution to significant economic effects for participants, so the value is real yet hard to attribute.
• Hossain, M., Leminen, S. and Westerlund, M. (2019). A systematic review of living lab literature. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.12.257 Reviews 114 scholarly articles on living labs and finds that publications increased significantly after 2015. It reports that the literature treats living labs simultaneously as landscapes, real-life environments and methodologies, and lists temporality, governance, user recruitment and unpredictable outcomes among the challenges.
• Santonen, T. et al. (2024). Towards living lab value proposition: living lab experts' perceptions of living lab value. doi:10.24840/2183-0606_012.003_0011 Ran an online workshop in which 22 living lab experts produced 208 value proposition suggestions, resolving into seven value categories and 31 value items. It found that living lab value argumentation is partly context-dependent, so the value is assembled by expert judgement rather than measured.
• Rosa, N. et al. (2026). Living lab methodology to foster user-centred health innovations. doi:10.1016/j.jik.2026.101127 Analyses the six living labs of the RESOLVE-Health programme and proposes a three-phase framework of conceptualisation, concretion and specialisation to compensate for the lack of a standardised methodology. It tests tools such as SWOT analysis and LEGO Serious Play and argues that each lab must be tailored to its ecosystem through action research.
• Stahlbrost, A. and Kareborn, B. B. (2011). Exploring users motivation in innovation communities. doi:10.1504/ijeim.2011.043051 Studies an innovation intermediary community to identify why users contribute. Motivation varied with community type and technology adoption type, and learning was an important motive for participation, which frames the living lab user as a contributor with their own interests.