Striving for realism in a user involvement process

Nowadays, it is commonly acknowledged that it is important to learn from users when the aim is to develop user-centred services and products. This is shown in the fact that a lot of the commercially important innovations that are developed today are developed by end-users. When it comes to innovation, it is burdened with uncertainty and the only way to get input on users reactions, is to start developing it and to let users use it. One way to involve users in the process of innovation development is the Living Lab approach in which one guiding principle is realism. In this paper, the aim is to define and illustrate how the Living Lab principle realism takes form and is facilitated in a mobile service development project described in this paper. We found that realism takes different forms dependent on in which phase the innovation process is.Godkänd; 2009; 20091201 (ann_joh