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 Lorm Hand is an installation, which connects deaf-blind people with twitter or other social networks. Using touch sensory technology, the Lorm Hand enables deaf-blind people to compose text messages by applying the tactile hand-touch alphabet LORM, a common way of communication used by the deaf-blind. After typing a message on the Lorm Hand, it can immediately be tweeted or shared with social networks.The Lorm Hand was initially developed for the march of the deaf-blind in Berlin (October 2013), when participants were given the opportunity to lorm their demands, needs, wishes and requests, so that the protest would go online and could be shared with a broader community.
Furthermore the Lorm Hand has been used as a tool of communication for other non deaf-blind people, who are generally interested in the topic “deaf-blindness” and who can use it as a learning tool, to literally get in touch with the idea of LORM or deaf-blind culture in general.
Follow @LormHand on Twitter!