The Aktan’s living lab started in Tours by a gathering of local actors, today we are part of the compagny Aktan (one of the founders). As an SME, we lead some Smart City projects with clusters, local gouvernements or other compagnies.

We have chosen to focus our attention in creating mobile tools. We needed to go on the field to meet a large scape of people. Many of them, wouldn’t have come to a workshop (because they have no time, or are not use to, or just aren’t aware of it existence). Our core value is to be an in situ user research tool for exploration, co-design and test. We are working in the heart of the activity, on the field, to collect qualitative data.

Our approach is based on a human-centric approach, with some service design tools.

We pay attention to the desirability of our action. We want people to participate spontaneously, and to use our installation to inspire the curiosity of passersby. We believe it’s important to adapt the way we collect data to the public, the environment, and the question at hand.

We created short (15min) and playfull animations to help people express themselves, have a good time (like a break in their day). We favor an approach which provokes participants to express their wants and needs. For certain issues, participants are also encouraged to develop their own solutions. Overall, our goal is to enable users to immerse and express themselves, to create, and to interact with others (directly or indirectly).