Releasing the Power of Users – in Belgium!

Releasing the Power of Users is one of AFINO’s associated research projects, run by the University of Stavanger. The projects is focusing on the health care sector and how to amplify the voice of the users when applying digital technology.

This spring, the project hosted two interactive user cafés with their partner LiCalab in Belgium.
Judy Hong Huang is a Ph.D. candidate in the project, with a focus on living labs. She gives this report from the User Cafés they ran with their Belgian partner:

In March 2023, our research project successfully ran another two User Cafés with the LiCalab, a living lab in the health and care sector in the Flemish Region of Belgium. The activities are also a part of the Transnational Access program to the European VITALISE project, a project with 17 international living lab research infrastructures in health and wellbeing.

User Cafe in Belgium
The User Café in Belgium.

Two physical sessions, themed “Innovative Products for Daily Life,” were hosted by LiCalab with 21 unique older adults (aged between 65 and 85) from the Flemish region. The events took place at the Turnhout Campus of the Thomas More University of Applied Science. There, we continued the exploration to research user involvement methods in the living lab setting by talking to the users, the older adults. The participants were passionate about joining the events where they could learn new knowledge, prepare for the future, meet up with others, and contribute to developing innovative technology.

Find out more about the VITALISE project (https://vitalise-project.eu/) and LiCalab (www.licalab.be)

You can also read about our previous User Cafés with the Norwegian Smart Care Lab, https://www.uis.no/en/innovation/user-cafe-with-norwegian-smart-care-lab.

Both photos are taken at the User Cafés in Belgium. Photo: Judy Hong Huang.