The 2016 Global GovJam theme was very inspiring for the Geneva team. Disintermediation in the process of People 2 People public services immediately came to our mind. Most of our team members being involved in different capacities in innovation, we very quickly converged on addressing our chalenge in the context of a Living Lab initiative of the State of Geneva.

In particular, our design brief was : how might we facilitate the emergence of impactful projects in the public administration ecosystem based on the Living Lab.

Also, after several years participating in many jams (yes, we're addicted ;-) we really wanted to enhance the "Low Tech" prototyping approach. Which is exactly what we ended doing and had a lot of fun doing it.

The Geneva Living Lab is currently being designed. It aims at helping impactful project leaders grow their projects with a user centric approach using innovative multidisciplinary methods.

The Living Lab should be a catalyst for the innovative projects and we try to keep it as decentralized as possible. Each stakeholder (project leader, partner, civil servant, citizen, politician) should be able to undertake the approach and make the methods theirs.

First step was to give visibility and legitimacy to the stakeholder by enabling them to proudly claim and show their membership to the Living Lab. Our team came-up with the idea of creating an artefact (a GovSpot, aka code named gSpot) which embodies the values and enables the Living Lab initiative approach. Each stakeholder should be able to declare itself on the Web plateform of the Living Lab and configure his profile. This identifies him in the Living Lab community and makes him alive on a digital map of the ecosystem.

At the same time a gSpot artefact is produced (by non for profit organisation partner of the Livng Lab for example) and sent to him. This 25 or 30 cm wide object (see protoype below) is a heavy and tangible proof that he is now a proud member of the Living Lab ecosystem. The gSpot embeds an NFC interface containing the information about the gSpot (members, function, projects,...). The gSpot owner can proudly exhibit it in his organisation.

We imagined different ways to explicit some kind of 'innovation maturity index' information on the gSpot but we didn't manage to accomodate them on our first prototypes. Likewise, we also imagined a personal innovation badge that people could wear indicating their skill levels in terms of Methods and Technologies.

Our last realization is the prototype of a 'Project cube' (see below) which is designed to embark the knowledge of each project (if there is one) carried out at the gSpot. Again the cube is made tangible so that people can play with it (and even leave the gSpot with it). Inside the cube we imagined an Arduino connected to 6 displays (one on each face of the cube). With proper configuration, the system is able to 'tell the story' of the project. Again each cube could be produced by non for profit organisation partner of the Livng Lab. As many project you have realized with the Living Lab, as many cubes you have... These cubes can also be organized as art work and be part of an innovation journey across the GovSpots of the city which can be visualised in on an GovSpot area Heat-map.

Christopher Larraz
David Joliat
Jean-Henry Morin
Patrick Genoud
Paul Bristow
Raymond Morel
Reginald Maître
Viktor K0mpl1t@
Yves Zieba

(and Princess Leia, the 3D printer in the expert hands of David :)

Special thanks to Thinkservices.info for the food, Lara for the logistics and CUI Open Innovation Lounge for hosting the 2016 Geneva GovJam spot.