Digital Innovation Lab

The Digital Innovation Lab at the FHNW School of Applied Psychology helps you design and future-proof your innovative products, services and work processes with a focus on people. We do this by combining psychological methods with digital tools.

Person-centred design for healthy employees and satisfied customers/users

The FHNW School of Applied Psychology specialises in researching people’s behaviour and experience in order to optimise their interactions at work and in daily life – dictated by current as well as future requirements – in what is an increasingly technological environment.

We have many years of experience in interdisciplinary and applied digitisation projects, from analysis to development and technical implementation.

The usability study and the symbol study were both hugely important to our commercial success. We were able to sell 200 machines with the new control panels without a single negative feedback on usability.

Marc Besson, CTO Rondo AG, Burgdorf

Ready for digital innovations

Digitisation and new technologies open doors to all kinds of opportunities for the economy and society. The Digital Innovation Lab helps you identify the best way of implementing the digital transformation and going your own way.

Our broad methodological and technological know-how enables you to test future scenarios right now by:

Designing future-proof user experience and product/service usability
Leveraging immersive technologies to effectuate physically complex objects and processes
Evaluating the potential of robots with social functions for interaction with humans

Areas of expertise

From evaluating websites to integrating social robots in a work context or designing virtual test environments – we can advise and support you in your digital project from idea to implementation.

Collaboration modalities

The Digital Innovation Lab offers interdisciplinary competencies and stationary as well as mobile technologies (test and observation rooms, robots with social functions, 3D technology, eye tracking) to answer your questions surrounding digital innovations. The insights gained inform the future-oriented design of work, learning, products and services.

Interlinking applied research, teaching and exchange with partners in business and society enables us to independently generate and apply new knowledge. It means we always have our finger on the pulse of current developments.

We offer bespoke support for your innovation projects, be they short-term and narrowly defined or longer-term and complex:

Research and development projects

Our applied research focuses on answering questions from companies and organisations around digital innovation.

Applied research and development projects serve to generate new knowledge for science and industry. They can receive public funding due to their innovative nature. As a tertiary education provider, we have a wide range of experience with a variety of funding modalities.

The results, which help participating companies in their projects, are further leveraged by the staff of the FHNW School of Applied Psychology (e.g. for continuing education or in the form of publications) in order to facilitate the transfer of knowledge between research, business and society.

Timeframe: between six months and several years. Geared towards longer-term cooperation.

Service projects

Our services – such as expert consulting, testing and training – assist companies and institutions in their search for tailored answers to a wide range of questions in the area of digital innovation.

Service projects are carried out at market rates by experts from the Digital Innovation Lab.

Timeframe: depends on the project. Short-notice projects possible.

Student projects (bachelor/master theses, project assignments)

Student projects offer the opportunity to work on a psychology-oriented problem within an organisation while providing a learning experience for the students.
Student projects (individual or group work) are supervised by lecturers with all the relevant qualifications.

Click here for details of the conditions that apply to student projects (in German only).

Timeframe: several months. Plus some lead time; coordinated with the FHNW School of Applied Psychology curriculum.

Contact us!

Are you looking to realise a project? Or perhaps you would like more information about the Digital Innovation Lab at the FHNW School of Applied Psychology? So we can get to know each other, arrange a no-obligation consultation or write to us at: Milena Rutz, Knowledge and Technology Transfer Officer.