Scottish Living Lab (SLL)
ISSTI is leading the development of a Scottish Living Lab for the mobile and wireless application and service sector, together with a consortium of Scottish Universities, business and public bodies.
What is a Living Lab
A Living Lab is a new sort of innovation facility that opens up the generation, testing and development of services and technologies to a broad set of potential users and stakeholders. It is a new sort of facility currently being developed in many countries, supported by business and public sector bodies looking for new ways to stimulate more effective and creative innovation.
The Living Lab takes traditional design and testing methods out of the laboratory into 'real life', cities, workplaces, homes. It use methods inspired by 'open' innovaiton and user-led design, bridges the gap between research and development, and taking a new product or service to market.
The SLL offers unique services to industry, university researchers and public bodies. The SLL conducts general research on issues of users and usage within particular sectors, offering advice and exeprtise to SLL clients, and recruits and manages a large network of potential users and advisers in these sectors who form the 'Living Lab', testing and providing feedback on on particular applications and services being tested.
The SLL will also enable business and public sector organisations to have early access to many of these new services, and play a role in their development and implemetnation
A key aim of the Living Lab concept is to find ways to make a broad range of social science knowledge and methods accessible in a useful way to business, and in a form that can be integrated into the development and commercialisation processes. Equally it will open the way for tools and products developed by industry to be brought into the academic research arena more quickly, to be integrated into research methods. The activity will be multidisciplinary, drawing on and feeding into research in social sciences, informatics and digital media and design. It addresses issues of innovation between digital media and wireless technology, and the problems of bringing together users and diverse business interests.
The Consortium
The Consortium currently consists of six High Education Institutes: The University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, Napier University the Edinburgh College of Art, Glasgow School of Art, and Dundee University. Each of these insitutions has long establish record in reesarch, develop and testing of innovative ICT products and services, and developing advance methods and research insights into the engeament of potential users in the design and innovation process. These partners will offer the core user research exeprtise and facilities. The SLL is not a closed network, but open to new partners with expertise to contribute
A key aim of the SLL is to support the growing and successful wireless applications and services sector in Scotland. To this end the SLL is working with Wireless Innovation, operated by Innovation Centres (Scotland) Ltd, a business dedicated to supporting and investing in this sector, with over 140 clients, and, and are involved in a the SLL as a strategic move to support these businesses.
The SLL is also supported by MX Alliance, the trade body for many firms in the mobile and wireless sector in Scotland
The SLL Operations
The SLL is run by a board, representing the consortium members, which selects projects proposed from with the network and by clients. The commerical activities will be run by an operating entity, taking responsibility for managing contracts and issues of confidentiality and IP. The research activities are run by the University consortium members