Noldus products are ideal to use for living lab studies. In the international research community living labs gain increasing acceptance as a way to deal with innovation and to get insight into the development process in general. A living lab brings together end-users, researchers, industrialists, and policy makers. In a living lab you can examine new technologies in everyday contexts. You can see how people use items to achieve their goals. Living lab studies involve for instance the study of user interface design, ergonomics, consumer behavior, and user acceptance.

• Examine new technologies in everyday contexts.
• See how innovative products work in real life situations.
• Involve stakeholders in the development process.
• Increase value for end-users.
• Create your own living lab on-the-go.

Living lab on-the-go
Our portable lab is the perfect toolkit to move research out of laboratories into real-life contexts. We have created a living lab ‘on-the-go’ which enables you to examine new technologies in everyday contexts. With a living lab on-the-go, you will be able to study human behavior in a natural setting without setting up an expensive arrangement. The result is the same: user involvement gives insights into smart innovation of user interfaces or products. By video observation and registration of behavior with The Observer XT, interaction can be studied accurately giving you the results you need to fine-tune your service, product, or user-interface. A living lab on-the-go provides the opportunity to observe behaviors in the social and dynamic context of daily life.

Work with The Observer XT to combine different devices
If you choose to work with The Observer XT, you can arrange your living lab in such a way that all recording devices work perfectly together. The Observer XT allows you to make synchronous multimodal recordings of video, screen captures, audio, key presses, eye movements, physiological measurements, and much more. When all your data has been integrated, The Observer XT allows you to search your data, so interesting segments are visible within seconds. As a result, you get complete insight into the interaction. You can also choose to combine observational data with automatic recordings of FaceReader™. If you incorporate FaceReader into your living lab, you will have the additional ability to record facial expressions automatically. Incorporating such measurements will ensure that with your research you optimize the product and increase value for end-users. In The Observer XT, FaceReader data can be combined with behavioral events for instance logged on Pocket Observer.

Pocket Observer
In a situation where you cannot easily place cameras, Pocket Observer offers the best solution. Pocket Observer runs on a handheld computer and is the ideal event logging tool for live observations. You can code behaviors live and see how people interact with novel objects. With Pocket Observer it is easy to move research out of laboratories into real-life contexts. It enables you to temporarily observe people in a home, office, or store without placing cameras. Imagine someone trying out the new interface of a vending machine; you want to know if it really works for them in real-life situations, not only in a laboratory environment. In this case, you focus on the interaction with a new user-interface, but you can also code behaviors on the handheld computer in a home to study human-product interaction, consumer science, or ergonomics.

Observe people while they eat
The Restaurant of the Future is a facility of the Wageningen University. This living lab is a unique environment in which scientists and marketeers can observe restaurant frequenters in conditioned situations for prolonged periods of time with the help of state-of-the-art observation and sensory technology. This research can include behavior, food choice, design and layout, the influence on buying and eating behavior of lighting, presentation, traffic flow, taste, packaging, preparation, and countless other aspects involving out of home eating and drinking. By working together in such a project, new opportunities arise for innovations and existing inventions are set to better use. A Living Lab has become a powerful instrument for effectively involving the user at all stages of the research, development, and innovation process.

Noldus has provided the Restaurant of the Future with the latest computer and video technologies, including The Observer XT for visualization and analysis of consumer behavior, cameras, PC’s, and microphones. The Restaurant of the Future offers the ultimate opportunity for both larger and smaller companies to take a validated step towards the market. We are pleased to invite you to visit and take a guided tour of the facility, including demonstrations of the data collection and analysis systems.

Extensive analysis
To get the most of your research data use:

• The Observer XT for its extensive analysis features and elaborate system for managing data. Our software allows you to visualize processes, calculate and compare metrics, and create highlight clips of video and data.
• Theme™ to unravel the time structure of behavior in any level of detail. This software is especially effective in analysis of interaction, such as social interaction or Human-Computer Interaction. 
• MatMan™ to analyze social interactions in groups, hierarchies, and sequences.

Full support
All our labs come with installation, training, and support. We set up your lab and make sure you know how to operate all hardware and software components. We train you how to use our software tools and give advice on different observation methods. If you experience any challenges, our support department is there to help you out. In short, we help you get the best out of your behavioral research!