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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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The Sound Hoodie
The Sound Hoodie is a refined version of the Sound Headband. It contains a hacked Bluetooth speaker module where the standard speakers are replaced with knitted speaker coils and Neodymium magnets. The hoodie can be wrapped around the neck and fixed with two hooks, one on each side. The outer hook also replaces the on-off switch. A blue LED on the front indicates that the speaker is on and running.
The Bluetooth speaker module is placed between two layers of self-made knitted fabric. All important connections are broken out on a flex PCB patch and connected to snap buttons. The buttons then connect to the upper and lower layer of the hoodie, making contact to the speaker coils, the on-off switch and an inductive coil for wireless charging.
The knitted textile and the cutting pattern are designed in a way to accommodate the knitted connections and the speaker coil the best way possible. This is why the stripe pattern in the knit runs diagonal from the back of the head to the front of the shawl. The Bluetooth speaker module can then be connected wirelessly to a mobile phone and play the favorite music of its wearer.