User needs and expectations as a challenging factor for successful living lab research initiatives involving older adults: The DDRI Experience

Despite the number of Living Labs now in existence worldwide and in Europe, there is still a limited amount of academic study and literature to guide their set-up and running. We were particularly interested in ethical guidelines and frameworks to guide research engagement and participation as Coventry University along with partners sought to develop and establish a new LL. This paper therefore intends to shed light on the ‘user engagement’ aspect, in particular when older adults, and adults with cognitive and physical impairments are involved. To do so, we recruited n=6 residents and n=2 family members from two residential living environments partners of the DDRI programme, a LL pilot initiative led by Coventry University. Methodologically, semi-structured interviews were conducted and the Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) method used to make sense of the data. A deductive coding frame was built informed by the study goals, and its categories included (among others) ‘user engagement’, ‘user commitment, ‘user expectation’, ‘user needs’, ‘nature of participation’. The results report on the participant views and concerns about these LL research topics, and provide (ethical) insights for future research collaborations.