The Design Research Lab is a laboratory for experimental design and research reflecting on the digital society. Through playful interventions, critical making and collaborative reasoning we investigate possible futures. As a platform and network, we are deeply involved with the requirements and policies needed for an inclusive and sustainable development of the digital society from a design perspective.
We are an interdisciplinary team of designers, researchers, tech-enthusiasts and critical thinkers from Berlin University of the Arts, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, as well as Einsteincenter Digital Future (ECDF).
The Industry 4.0 »Smart Maintenance Jacket« is a collaboration project between the Design Research Lab and the Telekom Innovation Laboratories (T-Labs). In order to make maintenance work in an industrial environment more efficient and safe, the »Smart Maintenance Jacket« features useful functions like the navigation through a building, the perception of different danger zones as well as the advanced warning from approaching objects outside the visual angle. In order to recognize those features in an intuitive and adaptable way, there are three different modes of output: the visible, the haptic and the audio mode. To offer the worker an easy handling for choosing the right modi a unique textile push-button was created by the team.