Methologies

Methods and tools to involve end-users are used for recruitment, for encouraging participation to activities, for keeping an ongoing community dynamic, for generating ideas, and in some case for giving the opportunity to end-users to be leaders of projects. Among these methods and tools that can help for one or several of these objectives, we can find:

• Before workshops: call for participations, e.g. call Happy Mum, call Pharmily, etc., are sent to the WeLL’s mailing list, and are largely broadcasted through social network channels;
• During workshops: “design thinking” and “creative problem solving” tools used in order to benefit from collective intelligence of end-user participants; these tools are always described in the feedback document sent to participants. Examples of tools are brainstorm, world café, scenarios, Thau method, prototyping, mind mapping, Chinese portraits, etc.;
• After workshops: content feedback is sent to each participant of workshop with an invitation to participate to next project activities (e.g. co-creation workshop (Happy Mum), co-creation workshop (Brain Peace), exploration workshop (Fil d’Ambroise))

In a continuous communication process, WeLL’s communication channels are used (website, twitter, facebook, monthly newsletter, pinterest) to communicate regularly on its activities; The WeLL co-organises various events (which are not directly linked to the projects) to attract new participants (e.g. increase awareness to Living Lab approach, and keep end-users active in the activities of the WeLL), e.g. Festival ImageSanté, disruptive medicine workshop, Cocktail Challenge, etc.

Tools

Examples of tools used in the Living Lab:

• brainstorming,
• world café,
• scenarios,
• Thau method,
• prototyping,
• mind mapping,
• Chinese portraits