Inclu­sion with digital tools

The Living Lab project (Sote Hyte Living Lab – Co-creation in North Karelia) worked together with Aistikanava, a company based in Outokumpu, to organ­ise a two-week exper­i­ment for the Magic Mirror equip­ment in spring 2023.  During the first week, the equip­ment was tested in Joensuu in Validia, a service provider of shel­tered housing under the Act on Disabil­ity Services and Assis­tance. Clients at the day centre were able to try the Magic Mirror on several days and give valu­able user feed­back. Then during the second week, people involved with the Living Lab project and a number of inter­ested students and teach­ers in the social and health care sector in Karelia and Riveria had the chance to try out the Magic Mirror at several differ­ent occa­sions in day centre facil­i­ties and on the Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences campus.

Multi­sen­sory gaming for groups

To plan the Living Lab coop­er­a­tion, we met with the foreper­sons from Validia for the first time in Decem­ber 2022. At that time, we initially discussed doing a small-scale tech­nol­ogy exper­i­ment to support the func­tional capac­ity of clients in a genuine client envi­ron­ment. Nego­ti­a­tions contin­ued through­out the spring while we were looking for suit­able tech­nol­ogy for the Living Lab experiment.

At the begin­ning of April, we visited the Living Lab project team at the facil­i­ties of Aistikanava in Outokumpu with entre­pre­neur Esko Vihava, and we were intro­duced to a solu­tion called Magic Mirror. The Magic Mirror™ uses creative and multi­sen­sory gaming to not only develop phys­i­cal engage­ment but also inter­ac­tion and commu­ni­ca­tion skills. It aims to find an acces­si­ble way for every­one to partic­i­pate in games. The equip­ment accom­mo­dates 1 to 6 players at one time. No sepa­rate controllers are needed for playing; instead every­one can partic­i­pate equally in the activ­i­ties by using their body or differ­ent parts of it. However, the equip­ment also enables using gaze, speech, switches, touch, game controllers or mouse and keyboard when neces­sary. For more infor­ma­tion on the Magic Mirror, see the Aistikanava website.

During our intro­duc­tion visit, we noted that the Magic Mirror appli­ca­tions let partic­i­pants with differ­ent levels of func­tional capac­ity work together and play in differ­ent envi­ron­ments. We got excited about the idea of testing the Magic Mirror with clients at a day centre facil­ity.  With the Aistikanava entre­pre­neur also inter­ested in working with us, we started plan­ning the actual experiment.

From plan­ning to prac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion at a quick pace

Imple­ment­ing a tech­nol­ogy exper­i­ment in a genuine oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment with end-user clients requires careful plan­ning. On the other hand, the plan­ning stage itself is not meant to take up an exces­sive amount of anyone’s time or be a hugely lengthy process, so that there will be enough time for the imple­men­ta­tion and eval­u­a­tion of the exper­i­ment as well. First of all, we agreed with the day centre instruc­tor on the storage of equip­ment, sched­ul­ing the exper­i­ment and inform­ing the clients about the exper­i­ment. In the plan­ning process, we used the exper­i­ment plan template used in the VaPa project, a collab­o­ra­tive project of Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences and the Central Karelia Devel­op­ment Company KETI that concluded in spring 2023. The template had been prepared with the help of the Government’s guide for support­ing exper­i­ments (Opas kokeilu­jen tuki­jalle 2019) and the Asso­ci­a­tion of Finnish Local and Regional Author­i­ties’ start­ing guide for exper­i­ments (Kokeil­i­jan start­ti­paketti 2017). We used the exper­i­ment plan template to prepare shared goals with the day centre instructor.

We set the goal of enabling instruc­tors and clients to famil­iarise them­selves with the new tech­nol­ogy. From the instructor’s perspec­tive, the aim was to gain prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence of using the tech­nol­ogy as part of main­tain­ing clients’ func­tional capac­ity. Another aim was to test whether the Magic Mirror intro­duces mean­ing­ful and differ­ent kinds of activ­i­ties to the day centre and to see how it facil­i­tates social situ­a­tions in a group.

In the last week of April, we tested the Magic Mirror during the day centre group activ­i­ties at Validia on four week­days for about one hour at a time. Eight of the day centre clients were brave enough to test the equip­ment in prac­tice. There were a total of about twenty intro­duc­tion visits during the week. Some clients did not neces­sar­ily partic­i­pate in actu­ally using the equip­ment, but they were still involved by follow­ing along what others were doing. Differ­ent contents were tested in various ways. The most popular content ended up being func­tional games where the players saw them­selves within the game world. One client commented: “it was better when you could see your­self in the game world, because it made it easier to know where your arms or legs were”. They said it felt like looking in the mirror. One day, we tested some relax­ing content, and people thought it was a pleas­ant alter­na­tive to other options like music.

Clients involved in the exper­i­ment gave the follow­ing feed­back: “Differ­ent kinds of exer­cise and new activ­i­ties”. One said that “we could use this from time to time”. Together with the testers, we also found that it was possi­ble to use the equip­ment while in a wheel­chair, even if you could not move your body much other­wise. Another comment was that “the best programs were the ones where you have to do some­thing (move or reach for some­thing with your arms or legs)”.

We also received feed­back on ideas for devel­op­ing the Magic Mirror equip­ment. From the perspec­tive of the day centre instruc­tor, the Magic Mirror allows clients do things that are pleas­ant and differ­ent. Testing the tech­nol­ogy was also reward­ing and the clients enjoyed the exper­i­ment week. The imple­men­ta­tion of the exper­i­ment also bene­fited from the tech­nol­ogy being easy to use. The Magic Mirror brought repet­i­tive move­ment and activ­i­ties to the day centre that people would not usually do, for example if they were in a wheel­chair. It was also inter­est­ing to see how the Magic Mirror exper­i­ment gener­ated pleas­ant conver­sa­tion when the equip­ment was being used. This means that solu­tions such as the Magic Mirror could offer commu­nal­ity and increase inter­ac­tion through differ­ent group activities.

At the end of the exper­i­ment week, we organ­ised a work­shop for working life part­ners at the premises of the Validia day centre. Five people joined in as collab­o­ra­tive working life part­ners.  They got to hear clients tell about their expe­ri­ences of using the equip­ment and the obser­va­tions made by the instruc­tor. Every­one also had the oppor­tu­nity to try out the equip­ment them­selves. The partic­i­pants were not famil­iar with the equip­ment, so exper­i­ment­ing with the new tech­nol­ogy was felt to be useful. During the work­shop, partic­i­pants consid­ered the possi­bil­i­ties of the Magic Mirror for differ­ent target groups and oper­at­ing envi­ron­ments. One clear advan­tage of the Magic Mirror is that it is suit­able for people with differ­ent func­tional capac­ity and for people of very differ­ent ages, chil­dren and older people alike. Setting up the Magic Mirror and moving it around is rela­tively easy, which makes it easy to move from one unit to another.

Campus week saw a steady stream of testers

The Magic Mirror was tested on three differ­ent days on the Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences campus at the begin­ning of May.  We organ­ised a pop-up event where anyone could stop by at any time or stay for a while. There were a total of 104 partic­i­pants who were mainly students and teach­ers in the social and health care sector at Karelia and Riveria. Some inter­na­tional students also partic­i­pated, so the project staff had the oppor­tu­nity to prac­tise instruct­ing the use of the equip­ment in English.

Feed­back was collected with a QR code from the partic­i­pants at the working life part­ners’ work­shop and the Karelia exper­i­ment week. The survey received 39 responses. We were very curious about how and where the partic­i­pants had heard about the Magic Mirror exper­i­ment. Most of the working life part­ners, Karelia’s person­nel and Riveria’s teach­ers had either received an email about it or heard about it from someone else. The students at both educa­tional insti­tu­tions said that they had heard about it from their teach­ers, and they did mostly come to learn about the equip­ment during their classes.

Only two people who gave feed­back on the exper­i­ments had previ­ous expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge of the Magic Mirror. The major­ity of the visi­tors felt that the exper­i­ment was useful and that it is impor­tant to have oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn about differ­ent social and health care tech­nolo­gies in a versa­tile way. The major­ity hoped the exper­i­ment would take place at a time that fit their sched­ules, during classes or as part of every­day work with clients.

Some students were inspired to check out the exper­i­ment after seeing an adver­tise­ment posted on the wall at the campus, which shows the students’ initia­tive and genuine inter­est in using new tech­nolo­gies in the social and health care sector. This led us to think that perhaps we could have more of these kinds of intro­duc­tions to tech­nol­ogy and testing oppor­tu­ni­ties on campus in the future, even outside classes. Similar events could bring together social and health care students who are partic­u­larly inter­ested in tech­nol­ogy and who might be inter­ested in joining the Living Lab activ­i­ties, for example.

Testers’ comments from the campus week:

“A fun and func­tional innovation!”

“Got sweaty and had fun”

“Very good I like it”

“These Living Lab activ­i­ties are so wonder­ful, it’s great to have an oppor­tu­nity to learn about differ­ent technologies!”

What did we learn from the Magic Mirror experiment?

In Decem­ber 2022, we published an article titled Living Lab – Possi­bil­i­ties for co-creation in North Karelia, where we explained what the Living Lab oper­at­ing model was about. During the spring of 2023, we have come up with ideas on what Living Lab activ­i­ties in Karelia mean in prac­tice for the various actors involved in the project, such as local social welfare and health care busi­nesses and organ­i­sa­tions and our other part­ners in the region as a whole. In prac­tice, the Magic Mirror exper­i­ment done in coop­er­a­tion with Validia and Aistikanava is our first larger co-creation process and tech­nol­ogy exper­i­ment. We started plan­ning the process already at the begin­ning of the year by looking for part­ners. As we did not have an exist­ing coop­er­a­tion network from busi­ness and working life at the time, this stage natu­rally took a while. After we found suit­able part­ners, the plan­ning progressed quite rapidly.

We organ­ised a joint feed­back discus­sion event a few weeks after the exper­i­ment. Aistikanava entre­pre­neur Esko Vihava thought that the plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion process went smoothly. Despite the tight sched­ule, the prac­ti­cal side of things was coor­di­nated well. Day centre instruc­tor Jonna Tolp­pa­nen said that the exper­i­ment was a nice thing as a whole. She did not find the exper­i­ment stress­ful because there were people offer­ing guid­ance and user support for the tech­nol­ogy the whole time. Getting infor­ma­tion out about the exper­i­ment at an earlier time would have been good, even though we managed to make it work on a tight sched­ule. So we cannot empha­sise the impor­tance of commu­ni­ca­tion enough, which is a good lesson learned.

Initially we also meant to involve social and health care students in Karelia and Riveria so that they could prac­tise using the equip­ment and guiding end-user clients. We had thought that we could fit five students to partic­i­pate in the client guid­ance situ­a­tions at one time, but after­wards, consid­er­ing the size of the day centre, about 2 to 3 students would have been more optimal. Finally, we concluded that getting students involved would have required a longer process, so we were not able to bring students and end users together this time.

With regard to the future, however, we now have good ideas on how to do the exper­i­ment in coop­er­a­tion with students. It is impor­tant for students to be intro­duced to differ­ent solu­tions that are already in use or being planned for the social and health care sector. This should happen already during their studies, both at the upper secondary level and at univer­si­ties of applied sciences, by intro­duc­ing solu­tions that are as diverse as possi­ble. Tech­no­log­i­cal exper­i­ments could offer more oppor­tu­ni­ties for prac­tis­ing actual guid­ance situ­a­tions and create a better under­stand­ing of how to utilise tech­nol­ogy in social and health care client work.

It was appar­ent from the students’ comments that they liked having new oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn about tech­nol­ogy. They also appre­ci­ated having some variety between long lectures by getting some exer­cise and exper­i­ment­ing with tech­nol­ogy, so it could be appro­pri­ate for recess activ­i­ties. In addi­tion, the students felt that there needs to be more oppor­tu­ni­ties for being intro­duced to tech­nol­ogy, as it may not be possi­ble to learn about or exper­i­ment with tech­nol­ogy out in the field in a way that is versa­tile enough.

Low-thresh­old oppor­tu­ni­ties for exper­i­ment­ing with new tech­nol­ogy are necessary

From the perspec­tive of the Living Lab project, the exper­i­ment was a unique learn­ing process. We imme­di­ately noticed that it is impor­tant that someone is always there to give guid­ance during the exper­i­ment and help with using the equip­ment. It is not enough to set up a new piece of tech­nol­ogy in a corner some­where. In addi­tion to testing the actual tech­nol­ogy, it is impor­tant to engage in dialogue with the people learn­ing about the tech­nol­ogy on how the solu­tion will be adapted to differ­ent target groups and users. Of course, we still need to have dialogue from differ­ent perspec­tives with clients, social and health care profes­sion­als, teach­ers and students. The perspec­tives of avail­abil­ity and acces­si­bil­ity are perhaps more empha­sised with clients, whereas the perspec­tive of guid­ance is partic­u­larly central with profes­sion­als and students in this sector.

All in all, the exper­i­ment was success­ful and rein­forced the idea of doing tech­nol­ogy exper­i­ments with Living Lab in the future as well. For example, we could use low-thresh­old pop-up events to visit differ­ent parts of the region and offer new expe­ri­ences with digi­tal­i­sa­tion to people of all ages. At the same time, social and health care students could prac­tise guid­ance situ­a­tions using new tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions. From the perspec­tive of working life part­ners, exper­i­ments of this type offer differ­ent network­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and, above all, ideas and input for devel­op­ing the oper­a­tions and services of their busi­ness or organ­i­sa­tion through tech­no­log­i­cal solutions.

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Authors:

Jaana Kurki, Project Manager, Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences
Suvi Leppä­nen, Project Special­ist, Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences 

The authors work in the Sote Hyte Living Lab co-creation project in North Karelia

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Sources:

Aistikanava. www.aistikanava.fi

Leppä­nen, A., Ripatti, H. & Jäppinen, T. 2017. Kokeil­i­jan start­ti­paketti. Asso­ci­a­tion of Finnish Local and Regional Author­i­ties. https://www.kuntaliitto.fi/julkaisut/2017/1867-kokeilijan-starttipaketti 2 June 2023

Aarnin­salo, L., Hokka­nen, V., Vester­i­nen, M. 2019. Kokeilu­lu­otsi – opas kokeilu­jen tuki­jalle. Publi­ca­tions of the Prime Minister’s Office 2019:1. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-287-685-0 2 June 2023