Prototyping a Health and Wellbeing Platform: an Action Design Research Approach

At present, healthcare providers are offering an overwhelming range of smart living products and services to support elderly in their daily routine and enhance their independent lifestyle. However, even smart living services that are technologically feasible and acceptable have not reached the mass-market yet, as end-users cannot find them in today's fragmented marketplace with an overload of information. Basically there is a mismatch between demand and supply. We argue that a multi-sided platform for health and wellbeing is required to help end-users search for smart living services and simultaneously supports service providers promoting their products. In this paper, we present the first prototype for such a platform that is developed in a Living Lab setting in the Netherlands. Next to that, this paper illustrates our Action Design Research (ADR) journey and the iterations and evaluation moments to support people age-in-place. Besides platform design, the project also delivers process knowledge on how to implement ADR in a real-life setting.