# Senior Living Lab: An Ecological Approach to Foster Social Innovation in an Ageing Society
## 7 Conclusions and Perspectives  
In this paper, we have presented the Senior Living Lab, a living lab created in Switzerland and aiming at promoting ageing well at home pathways through the co-creation with older adults of innovative products, services and practices. The Senior Living Lab is based on participatory design and on an ecological approach.  
During the first year of life of the Senior Living Lab, many insights have been gathered. This paper presents the insights relative to the SLL methodology and the role of the ICT in this context.  
Compared to the existing living labs within the ENoLL network, the Senior Living Lab proposes a different approach with regard to novel technologies. In particular, we have seen that older adults are generally insecure when dealing with ICTs. The causes can be different and vary with the older adult's age, culture and health conditions, as well as with the application context. A major issue is the association of technologies with a diminution of human and social contacts. From our perspective, the primary objective of a living lab is not to design novel ICT solutions, but to provide ecological solutions to specific issues. In this scenario, technologies are fundamental, but can be made invisible or acceptable to the final users if carefully designed involving the user in the process from the very beginning. In fact, we have observed that when applying participatory design methodologies, older adults will rarely propose solutions involving novel technologies. On the other hand, they are open to discuss new technology propositions and include them if they feel that the technology will not negatively affect their lifestyle (e.g., reduction of social contacts, stigmatization, etc.).  
Living labs have to maintain a precarious balance between academics, companies, associations, political entities and the final users, while working together in an ecological approach. During the first year of life, the Senior Living Lab has experimented with the necessity of have a transdisciplinary team in order to face the very different challenges that this rich heterogeneity can potentially generate. Transdisciplinarity is therefore the key to enable a living lab to design and realize actual ecological interventions.  
In the next year, the academic partners in collaboration with the companies will concretize the results of the first phases of co-design. Obviously, this second phase will also include the users in the implementation and evaluation of the tasks. Meanwhile, the SLL partners are working to define a business plan allowing the living laboratory to be sustainable and keep living in a long-term scenario.  
This research project was funded by Gebert Rif Stiftung (GRS/06/714) and the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland. We thank our partners [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] for their participation in this research project. We also thank University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland School of Nursing La Source, Lausanne, Switzerland, the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Ecole Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne (ECAL), Lausanne, Switzerland, the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland School of Business and Engineering, Yverdon, Switzerland, and the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg, Switzerland, for their contribution.  
**Author Contributions:** All of the authors participated in conceiving of and designing the Senior Living Lab methodologies and experiments. [PERSON] and [PERSON] wrote the paper, while [PERSON], [PERSON], and [PERSON] revised it and contributed to its improvement.  
**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.