The main purpose of WP7 is to foster community building and cyclical user-centric innovation by establishing a network of complementary Living Labs in our three different countries which facilitate the engagement of stakeholders and the testing, in real conditions, of the MoveUS smart mobility applications. As of the start of the project, three piloting cities have been identified. These pilot sites are user communities in which such user-centric innovation will occur. They will aim at becoming full Living Labs by the end of the project, but that is
not our ultimate goal: the focus will nevertheless be put in ensuring that they can cover the innovation cycle and provide relevant pre – and post – feedback on the MoveUS smart city mobility applications and services from a user perspective, which is the key concept to ensure sustainability after MoveUS.
At all times, the centre of the research will be the users themselves.
Across the MoveUS pilot sites, these individuals’ characteristics should form a comprehensive set able to cover:
- All the main types of users involved in the value chain: SMEs, citizens and local policy makers.
- Three age ranges of end-users: young, adult and elderly persons.
- The different scenarios as used and configured by MoveUS (WP2) and as requested by the own cities.
The main objectives of this workpackage are to:
- Define the methodology that will be applied throughout all the pilot sites so they can become Living Labs, and ensure coordination with the other project’s tasks
- Provide an evaluation framework and technological tools that is common to all the MoveUS Living Labs. These tools will be localised it in each Living Lab in T6.5 (WP6)
- Bring the user and usability approach into business and services development, and consequently into R&D on sustainable and collaborative mobility.
- Coordinate the different living labs and promote them into the ENoLL network and other relevant institutions to ensure that other projects and initiatives reach these communities.
- Coordinate the user trials reports and provide a wrap-up high-level document with recommendations for future research on the matter of Living Labs for smart mobility in urban areas.
- Establish sustainable user communities through the enablement of feedback mechanisms and the identification of local change agents that could become useful allies. These user communities could be used in the future to track changing preferences in terms of smart city services-to-be.