Abstract

Online user communities and social networks are both used for user involvement in innovation process. Even though both of them have active participants as key driving force for innovation, they are still not the same. Therefore, this study investigated citizens’ motivations to participate in an online user community, and compared how these motivations differ from motivations to participate in social networks. We conducted a UX study with 51 participants in total. The findings revealed that the role of moderator is a crucial for active participation and keeping up users’ motivation. In addition, our findings suggest that an online living lab community shares common characters with other social networks, but it cannot be replaced by social media. The differences between online living lab and social network community are related to user motivations, and the needs of the customers and researchers for living lab activities. In this paper, we present a process of Oulu Urban Living Lab with user involvement supported by the PATIO online user community. Also requirements, system architecture and a new version of PATIO are described. Even though an amount of participants in our living lab study is relatively small, we want to share these insights for professionals of industry and academy.