Profile
Agile unit for research, teaching and collaboration in design
We are about 30 researchers from various disciplines: Design, Biomedicine, Engineering, Psychology, Business Administration and Economics, Computer Science, Physics and Social Sciences. We integrate practical research projects into our courses and explore research fields together with our students. This is how we live co-creation right from the start, with a growing network of partners.
Life-centered design:
human-centered with a holistic system perspective
In a technological environment, we place people at the center of our research. We do so in developing solutions and environments that promote responsible and sustainable action: from product to system level, for ecological, social and economic sustainability. Our findings rely on empirical research.
Design as a connector
In design, we communicate ideas through visual or other tangible representations - physically or digitally. We make them accessible to all stakeholders and promote a collaborative environment. Combining multiple disciplines from the technical to the social, we stand out with hybrid prototyping & transfer skills. With growing attention to impact-oriented research, to transfer and public engagement, our iterative, adaptive approaches acknowledging complexity prove to be a working mode in growing demand. Learned tolerance of ambiguity: As designers, we do not fear uncertainty, we embrace it as a creative force. We use this potential in our research as well as in an initiating or supporting role for others.
What makes us stand out:
integrating design and engineering
The Chair of Industrial Design Engineering at TU Dresden is the one of the largest academic design research institution in Germany embedded in the context of engineering. Design with its key capacity to visualize innovative solutions makes us an integral part of the engineering landscape of TU Dresden and its partnering institutions of DRESDEN-concept alliance.
Active in changing roles, with a multi-institutional perspective
Within this ecosystem, we act in multiple roles: from scientific to initiating, from teaching to learning, from catalyst to system-thinking, from problem-solving to discovering - systematically expanding the mediating role of design. Some of our researchers also work for partner institutions of the DRESDEN-concept alliance and thus embody a multi-institutional perspective themselves.
