From the user's perspective
Our expertise includes
- Analysing innovations from the following fields
- Information technology
- Technical assistance systems (AAL-Ambient Assisted Living)
- Smarthome technologies
- Service robotics for the elderly
- Healthcare, eHealth, outpatient care
- Multimedia applications
- Services for domestic spaces
- Information technology
- Analysing the extent to which innovations adequately reflect the needs of consumers
- Testing the user-friendliness of design and usability
- Analysing and evaluating innovations from ethical and social perspectives
Our research focuses on the domestic sphere
Beyond that, it focusses on the actors, institutions and stake-holders which are particularly relevant to this sector e.g. housing; public welfare; health, care, leisure and education services. In order for innovations to be successful in the domestic sphere, they must also be of benefit and value to these stakeholders.
We are known to develop models
and to test innovations directly in their domestic environments. We examine whether a product is suitable for its everyday context, whether its usability is successful, and whether it fulfils the everyday requirements of the actual environments themselves, that is, the users’ homes. This results in a systematic and comprehensive analysis of weaknesses, suggestions for further product development and, last but not least, often in new product ideas which emerge directly from users’ lives.
We are experts for complex questions,
which are not easily tackled by standard methods of empirical social research. This includes, for example, the question of which circumstances are necessary for robots to be accepted as friendly companions for elderly people and where, when introducing technical support systems in care homes, the boundary lies between support and disenablement. Or what can be learned from peoples’ motivations to consult healers or spiritual guides which can then be used to improve out-, and inpatient care. Our studies help to bring new, creative perspectives to conventional approaches and novel impulses to problem-solving. Examples of previous projects can be found under Research or Dr. Sibylle Meyer / Themes.