Best Paper Award at Open Living Lab Days 2016

Best paper award of 2016 goes to “Towards FALL: a Framework for Agile Living Lab projects ” author Tanguy Coenen from iMinds Living Labs. The award was presented at the Open Living Lab Days 2016 in Montreal. 

As a rather young and recent phenomenon, Living Labs create numerous challenges and issues to be tackled by both scholars and practitioners. It is necessary to add to both the theoretical and practical knowledge on Living Labs in order to advance the learning in this field. Within the OpenLivingLab Days a call for papers was launched to address both conceptual and empirical challenges and stimulate discussion on a number of Living Lab related topics.

What is a Best Paper Award?

Veli-Pekka Niitamo Prize for best academic contribution has been established in 2013 in memory of Veli-Pekka ͚Vellu͛ Niitamo, the Father of the Living Lab movement, long standing member of the ENoLL Council and one of the founding members of the ENoLL Association. 

How is the best paper selected?

The laureate for the best paper award selected based on the votes of both the Scientific Committeeand conference participants. The prize was given based upon the initial reviewers marks but also the votes of all the participants collected in a co-creation manner during the event. Each paper was reviewed by two or three reviewers for neutrality purposes. Criteria according to which the best paper was chosen is: 

• Background and Significance
• Readability
• Originality / Novelty (contribution) 
• Research (design/method)

Towards FALL: a Framework for Agile Living Lab projects ABSTRACT

Living lab methods need to enhance reactivity to changing requirements as these appear in a project. Agile methods allow for quick reactivity, but have been critiqued for not taking the end-user perspective enough into account. We describe how to blend living lab methodologies with agile methods and to this end present a Framework for Agile Living Lab projects (FALL). To make it actionable, a number of principles and actor roles are proposed. With concrete examples from living lab practice and a discussion of the theoretical basis, this paper is relevant to both academics and practitioners. Being rooted in Design Science Research, it follows this discipline’s tradition of generating practical recommendations based on theory.

You can read all of the papers that were submitted for Best Paper Award in Conference Proceedings: LINK