User Experience Research
Our research area “UX-Research“ deals with the question how new services and innovation need to be designed in order to reach high a high level of acceptance among the respective target groups. One essential approach is the involvement of users within the development process. Based on this approach our user experience research consists of three cornerstones:
- Living Lab and Open Innovation
- Co-Creation
- Technology Acceptance
Living Lab and Open Innovation:
The open innovation approach has considerably changed the development process of new products and services. The involvement of end users in the whole innovation process is one major focus of our research- and development activities. For this purpose, evolaris has established an open innovation platform, namely the evolaris Living Lab, where user and customer integration can be supported with various tools and methods.
Everyone who is interested in shaping the digital world of tomorrow can be part of the evolaris Living Lab. Registration is available under the link https://evolab-plattform.evolaris.net.
The co-creation approach, for us, is an ideal method in order to develop products and services effectively and in compliance with users’ needs. Within this methodology we involve lead users in idea-finding and prototyping tests, set up online focus groups and maintain and further develop our virtual co-creation lab, the evolaris Living Lab.
Technology Acceptance:
We define technology acceptance as a conscious decision to adopt and repeatedly use new devices and services. Especially the area of mobile technologies faces major challenges based on the dynamic change of use and user contexts. Hence, punctual assessments and static models become more and more inadequate. We respond to these challenges within our technology acceptance research area as follows:
- With automated survey methods “continuous usage” research is taken into account.
- Context- sensitive in-situ survey tools enable us to capture various usage-contexts in a seamless and accurate way.
- Long-term field studies and the integration of new, beyond traditional technology acceptance models reaching factors, allow specific statements about the “real usage” and not just the intentions of use.
With these three areas combined under our User Experience Research focus, we have created ideal conditions to capture the context of use while the actual use of technologies is ongoing. This enables us, on the one hand, to identify causal correlations which explain the acceptance towards innovative technologies clearer than in the past, and on the other hand, potentials for innovative context-adaptive applications can be derived.
