During the last decade, the living lab and co-creation concepts have started being blended with the Responsible Research and Innovation approach, aiming to evaluate potential societal anticipations toward fostering an inclusive RRI behavior. Teaching co-creation concept and living lab methodologies to university students has started been considered as valuable for future researchers along with the demand of companies and public sectors which turn toward user-center techniques for inspiration to develop innovative and services. To this end, the scientific publications presenting work on teaching co-creation and living lab methodologies are not so many while there are no published research studies on experiential learning activities for teaching co-creation and living lab approaches to university students. This study presents a course based on living labs and co-creation methodologies through experiential learning activities, consisted of four different lectures and an open event. The study involves stakeholders from the academia, the citizens, and the public sector. The results show that lectures with the participation of end-users were the most enjoyable. Furthermore, students thought that they learned the most when they first met the end-users. This lecture was perceived as a successful way to gain methodical knowledge for user-centered design and software development.

Conventional clinical cognitive assessment has its limitations, as evidenced by the environmental shortcomings of various neuropsychological tests conducted away from an older person’s everyday environment. Recent research activities have focused on transferring screening tests to computerized forms, as well as on developing short screening tests for screening large populations for cognitive impairment. The purpose of this study was to present an exergaming platform, which was widely trialed (116 participants) to collect in-game metrics (built-in game performance measures). The potential correlation between in-game metrics and cognition was investigated in-depth by scrutinizing different in-game metrics. The predictive value of high-resolution monitoring games was assessed by correlating it with classical neuropsychological tests; the area under the curve (AUC) in the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was calculated to determine the sensitivity and specificity of the method for detecting mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Classification accuracy was calculated to be 73.53% when distinguishing between MCI and normal subjects, and 70.69% when subjects with mild dementia were also involved. The results revealed evidence that careful design of serious games, with respect to in-game metrics, could potentially contribute to the early and unobtrusive detection of cognitive decline.

Background: Living Labs are user-centered, open innovation ecosystems based on a systematic user cocreation approach, which integrates research and innovation processes in real-life communities and settings. The Horizon 2020 Project VITALISE (Virtual Health and Wellbeing Living Lab Infrastructure) unites 19 partners across 11 countries. The project aims to harmonize Living Lab procedures and enable effective and convenient transnational and virtual access to key European health and well-being research infrastructures, which are governed by Living Labs. The VITALISE consortium will conduct joint research activities in the fields included in the care pathway of patients: rehabilitation, transitional care, and everyday living environments for older adults. This protocol focuses on health and well-being research in everyday living environments. Objective: The main aim of this study is to cocreate and test a harmonized research protocol for developing big data–driven hybrid persona, which are hypothetical user archetypes created to represent a user community. In addition, the use and applicability of innovative technologies will be investigated in the context of various everyday living and Living Lab environments. Methods: In phase 1, surveys and structured interviews will be used to identify the most suitable Living Lab methods, tools, and instruments for health-related research among VITALISE project Living Labs (N=10). A series of web-based cocreation workshops and iterative cowriting processes will be applied to define the initial protocols. In phase 2, five small-scale case studies will be conducted to test the cocreated research protocols in various real-life everyday living settings and Living Lab infrastructures. In phase 3, a cross-case analysis grounded on semistructured interviews will be conducted to identify the challenges and benefits of using the proposed research protocols. Furthermore, a series of cocreation workshops and the consensus seeking Delphi study process will be conducted in parallel to cocreate and validate the acceptance of the defined harmonized research protocols among wider Living Lab communities. Results: As of September 30, 2021, project deliverables Ethics and safety manual and Living lab standard version 1 have been submitted to the European Commission review process. The study will be finished by March 2024. Conclusions: The outcome of this research will lead to harmonized procedures and protocols in the context of big data–driven hybrid persona development among health and well-being Living Labs in Europe and beyond. Harmonized protocols enable Living Labs to exploit similar research protocols, devices, hardware, and software for interventions and complex data collection purposes. Economies of scale and improved use of resources will speed up and improve research quality and offer novel possibilities for open data sharing, multidisciplinary research, and comparative studies beyond current practices. Case studies will also provide novel insights for implementing innovative technologies in the context of everyday Living Lab research. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/34567

Background: Ecologically valid evaluations of patient states or well-being by means of new technologies is a key issue in contemporary research in health and well-being of the aging population. The in-game metrics generated from the interaction of users with serious games (SG) can potentially be used to predict or characterize a user’s state of health and well-being. There is currently an increasing body of research that investigates the use of measures of interaction with games as digital biomarkers for health and well-being. Objective: The aim of this paper is to predict well-being digital biomarkers from data collected during interactions with SG, using the values of standard clinical assessment tests as ground truth. Methods: The data set was gathered during the interaction with patients with Parkinson disease with the webFitForAll exergame platform, an SG engine designed to promote physical activity among older adults, patients, and vulnerable populations. The collected data, referred to as in-game metrics, represent the body movements captured by a 3D sensor camera and translated into game analytics. Standard clinical tests gathered before and after the long-term interaction with exergames (preintervention test vs postintervention test) were used to provide user baselines. Results: Our results showed that in-game metrics can effectively categorize participants into groups of different cognitive and physical states. Different in-game metrics have higher descriptive values for specific tests and can be used to predict the value range for these tests. Conclusions: Our results provide encouraging evidence for the value of in-game metrics as digital biomarkers and can boost the analysis of improving in-game metrics to obtain more detailed results.

Preventive care and telemedicine are expected to play an important role in reducing the impact of an increasingly aging global population while increasing the number of healthy years. Virtual coaching is a promising research area to support this process. This paper presents a user-centered virtual coach for older adults at home to promote active and healthy aging and independent living. It supports behavior change processes for improving on cognitive, physical, social interaction and nutrition areas using specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-limited (SMART) goal plans, following the I-Change behavioral change model. Older adults select and personalize which goal plans to join from a catalog designed by domain experts. Intervention delivery adapts to user preferences and minimizes intrusiveness in the user’s daily living using a combination of a deterministic algorithm and incremental machine learning model. The home becomes an augmented reality environment, using a combination of projectors, cameras, microphones and support sensors, where common objects are used for projection and sensed. Older adults interact with this virtual coach in their home in a natural way using speech and body gestures on projected user interfaces with common objects at home. This paper presents the concept from the older adult and the caregiver perspectives. Then, it focuses on the older adult view, describing the tools and processes available to foster a positive behavior change process, including a discussion about the limitations of the current implementation.