We
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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SmartSenior
In Germany, the proportion of older people in the population is growing: By 2035, more than half of all people will be over 50 years old and every third person will already be over 60. This demographic development in our society poses a great challenge: How can we ensure that the growing number of senior citizens live for as long as possible while maintain a high degree of independence and receiving optimum care? The initiative “SmartSenior – intelligent services for senior citizens” has set itself this precise task; to create and maintain the best possible quality of life for older people.
SmartSenior is a research project, supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the contributions of many renowned companies and research institutions.
Within the SmartSenior consortium DesignResearchLab takes responsibility for user centered and platform crossing interaction design guidelines. We therefore conduct a process, aiming at the implementation of guidelines that are following ergonomic, universal and inclusive design principles. DRL is involved in the evaluation activities regarding implementation of graphical user interfaces in application prototypes. Moreover DRL leads a process to involve user-archetypes (personas) in the conceptual process of application design.
Copyright of associated images is held by: TU-Berlin, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, DAI-Labor, and Siemens.
