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The Design Research Lab is a network of people, organisations, and non-human agents engaged at the intersection of technologies, materials, and social practices. Our aim is to design socially and ecologically sustainable tools, spaces, and knowledge that support people’s participation in a digital society – based on common principles of inclusiveness and respect for the planet. This puts the basic democratic right to take part in the digital sphere into practice. We start our research from individual lifeworlds and the needs of minoritized groups, beyond consumer majorities.
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).
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Sensor-based Health Services
The main goal of the “Forschungscampus Connected Technologies” research project “Sensor-Based Health Services” is to develop innovative technologies and services to maintain and improve individual health conditions and to support independent living. Our vision is “more time in good health”. Overall, it is about innovative home and mobile service concepts based on ambient and wearable sensor components. These should encourage physical activity in elderly, unobtrusively monitor their general heath condition and offer expert advice as well as assistance in case of need.
In this BMBF-funded research project Design Research Lab is conducting iterative user workshops in order to understand and elicit user needs as well as to analyze the requirements for new forms of interaction in smart home environments. The goal is to design and prototype user interfaces with innovative forms of interaction for users and service personnel to effortlessly manage sensor-based service systems. The outcome is a mobile touchscreen based social, playful application with a weekly activity plan and a point system. It reflects the behaviour of the user in the form of visual and auditory metaphors and makes them aware of relevant information in an abstract and emotional way.