Living Labs Guidelines
What it is
A Living Lab is an open innovation space set in a real-life environment that uses continuous feedback across the whole life-cycle of an idea to create lasting impact. Inside a university, it turns students, staff and outside partners from an audience into genuine co-creators of change around equality, diversity and non-discrimination.
These guidelines give a lab leader the shared language and the practical backbone to set one up. Their first job is to make one thing clear to everyone involved: a Living Lab is not a physical room or a one-off event — it is a personalised, context-driven process that each university shapes around its own challenge.
When to use it
- You are starting a Living Lab and need everyone to share the same understanding of what it is — and is not.
- You want to align different teams, departments or partner universities around one coherent approach.
- You need a step-by-step backbone — from design through to sustainability — rather than a single workshop.
How to implement it
A Living Lab runs in three phases across one cycle — design it, co-create in it, then evaluate and share what works.
- Start of the cycle
Design your Living Lab
Define your focus from earlier audits, webinars and academy work; assemble your core team and its responsibilities; and set the ethical ground rules (consent, inclusion, data protection).
You produce- Your Living Lab, set up and running
- An action plan with clear, measurable goals
- A map of your stakeholders and ecosystem
- Mid-cycle
Co-create in the lab
Run participatory events with internal and external stakeholders — workshops, prototyping, design sprints, not lectures. Choose methods that fit your local context and document each outcome.
You produce- Students actively contributing
- Staff and professionals involved
- External organisations engaged
- End of the cycle
Evaluate & disseminate
Prototype and test solutions with stakeholders, write a sustainability plan for what will continue beyond the project, and share results through social media, internal events and the final event.
You produce- Solutions prototyped and tested
- A plan to sustain what works
- Results shared with a wider audience
Use this method first, when you are setting up a Living Lab. Once the design is in place, bring in other methods to run it:
- The Newspaper of Tomorrow — to build a shared vision of the future you want
- World Café — to open honest dialogue and surface ideas
- Action & Sustainability Plans — to turn ideas into lasting action
Living Lab Design Canvas
Work through this canvas with your core team to design your Living Lab. Print it at A3, or fill it in together on screen.
Focus & challenge
Which equality, diversity or non-discrimination challenge in your context will the lab address?
Core team & roles
Who leads the lab, and who is responsible for what?
Objectives
Set 2–3 clear, measurable goals for the lab.
Target groups
Who will take part in, or benefit from, the lab?
Ecosystem map
Key stakeholders — public institutions, civil society, business, community — and the gaps.
Activities & timeline
What happens, and when, across your cycle?
Resources & gaps
People, budget and institutional support you have — or still need.
Ethics
Consent, inclusion, data protection and power balance.
People to involve
Which students, staff and external partners will co-create with you?
Solutions to prototype
The solutions your lab will brainstorm, prototype and test.
Sustainability
Which solution(s) continue after the project — and how?
Dissemination
How you will share results and reach a wider audience.
How to facilitate a session
A step-by-step guide to running a Living Lab design session with the canvas — how to prepare, facilitate, and follow up afterwards.
1 Prepare
- Invite 5–15 people: your core team, plus a few students, staff and one or two external partners.
- Set aside 2–3 hours — or split it into two shorter sessions.
- Print the canvas at A3 (one per group) with markers and sticky notes — or open it on a shared online board.
- A day before, send participants a short note on the challenge and on what a Living Lab is.
- Agree roles: a facilitator to guide, a note-taker to capture, and a timekeeper.
2 Run the session
- 10 minWelcome & purpose — why you are here, and simple ground rules: everyone contributes, no idea is wrong.
- 20 minFocus & challenge — fill the top of the canvas together and agree the challenge in one sentence.
- 30 minTeam, objectives & target groups — who leads, 2–3 measurable goals, and who takes part.
- 25 minEcosystem map — brainstorm stakeholders on sticky notes, then cluster them and spot the gaps.
- 30 minActivities, resources & ethics — what happens and when, what you need, and how you protect participants.
- 30 minSolutions, sustainability & dissemination — first ideas to prototype, what should last, and how you will share it.
- 15 minWrap-up — agree owners and the date of your first activity, and photograph the canvas.
3 Follow up
- Within 48 hours, send participants the completed canvas, a short summary, and the agreed next steps and owners.
- Turn the canvas into your action plan.
- Schedule your first Living Lab activity and confirm who does what.
- Invite feedback so you can improve the next session.
4 Running it online
- Keep online sessions shorter (60–90 min), with more breaks and one idea per sticky note.
- Use a collaborative whiteboard with the canvas as a template, so everyone works on it visually at once.
- Use a video call with breakout rooms for small-group work, and quick polls or word clouds to gather input fast.
- Prefer privacy-respecting, GDPR-compliant tools, and share the board link so people can keep adding after the session.
Example of implementation from the Labs4Change project
This was very helpful for us, as it ensured that all participants had a similar understanding. It was particularly useful for aligning the different visions and plans of our three universities in this project into a more coherent approach.
When the person in charge of a lab and the participants understand that living labs are not physical spaces and should be personalised to their own contexts.
Explored the Labs4Change resources? Share your feedback
Your first impressions will help us improve the platform, Toolkit and other project outputs, and make them more useful and accessible for future users.
Resources & references
- Definition ENOLL — What are Living Labs? The definition these guidelines build on.
- Example ULTIMATE — a Living Lab on water A real-world lab you can use as a reference.
- Example Wuppertal Institute — a Living Lab on circular economy
- Paper Eckhardt et al. (2021), Ecosystems of Co-Creation Frontiers in Sociology, 6, 642289.
- Reference Maldonado-Mariscal & Schröder (2023), Social innovation in education Encyclopedia of Social Innovation, Edward Elgar.