The Living Lab approach, which combines the best practices of Human-centred, Participatory and Iterative design, succeeds in achieving “adequate design”, the authors argue. This paper presents the research done to redesign a connected balance scale, called balance quality tester (BQT): a low-cost balance assessment tool for fall prevention, examining usage and utility. Like other Ambient Assisted Living products, in order for older adults to voluntarily adopt a technology, the benefits of use of a product/service must be made clear to them. Thus, what more – other than technical and clinical validity – is needed for the BQT to succeed in being a useful tool for large-scale prevention of falls? Rather than a technology-first or even medical-first approach, this research considers first the fundamental needs and concerns of the ones at the centre of the investigations – the elderly people – and other end-users, like health professionals (GPs, geriatricians, pharmacists, physiotherapists). So as to guarantee the appropriateness of the design ideas, from the needs analysis to the validation of the new design proposals – the participants have been actively involved in the different tasks.

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies can play an important role in helping elderly people achieve healthy ageing and maintain their autonomy. The balance quality tester (BQT) is a device for remote assessment of balance quality for older people at risk of falling. It has been validated both from a technical and a clinical perspective. However, for the BQT to be considered as a useful tool for long-term home monitoring of people with balance impairments, two issues are at stake: ease-of-use on a regular basis and trust in the validity of the data acquisition. To ensure this utility, a usage study has been made to understand the needs and values of different stakeholders: elders at risk of falling and their entourage, as well as health professionals. One main insight was the need to redesign the BQT, so as to fit the needs concerning ease-of-use and trust in validity of data acquisition. Using a Human-centred and Participatory Design approach, the redesigning work relates to hardware design, interaction design, interface design, and most of all to standardizing the protocol of stepping-on the BQT. This paper describes the main results, i.e. the design recommendations, and discusses the collaborative and iterative design process, which allowed the successful redesign of the BQT.