Type of Project: Funded project
IDEAL4.0 – Inclusive Digital Work Life and Experience 4.0

The project "IDEAL4.0 - Inclusive Digital Work Life and Experience 4.0" has set itself the goal of making it easier for people with disabilities to enter the primary labor market through digital offerings.

In every project phase, the project team pursues the goal of involving all stakeholders who accompany this path in the user-centered development.

Using a motivational approach to interaction design, standardized work processes are to be translated into a digital environment and enable self-directed learning and practice in an innovative way.

The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS) with resources from the Equalization Fund and is limited to three years.

Agile and inclusive project work
The three-year research and development project is designed so that the three research phases of exploration, realization, and implementation each take one year to complete. Due to the impact of the Corona pandemic, it was necessary to link and adapt these phases according to the needs of agile and digital collaboration.

In the first phase, the qualitative-empirical target group exploration (user research), data is collected that provides information about the problems faced by people with impairments when they make their way into the primary labor market.
The research data is continuously evaluated and fed into the development of prototypes in the implementation phase in cooperation with the experts for user-centered interaction at CODE University Berlin.

In continuous loops, the prototypes are further developed in an agile process with the participation of the relevant stakeholders, close to the target group, user-centered and in practice. The interlocked processing of exploration and implementation thus offers the opportunity to obtain concrete interim results and to further develop them from practical experience. The goal is the production of a Minimal Viable Product (MVP), which is to be implemented on a test basis in the third phase.

Through a continuous evaluation, challenges can be named and incorporated into the process in a timely manner, taking into account the parameters of user-centeredness, consideration of the given conditions, accuracy as well as evaluation of usefulness.
An essential part of the evaluation, considering the respective perspectives given in the project network, is the transdisciplinary perspective for the development of a common contextual horizon.

An inclusive participation will be realized among others by:
• semi-structured interviews with stakeholders of the social economy, employers as well as employees with impairments
• participatory observations during everyday work in vocational training centers (BBW), in workshops for people with disabilities (WfbM) and on the general labor market
• user-centered and practice-oriented research
• recurring tests and further development of prototypes by the target group
• participation in the media appearance of the project by trainees of the BBW in the Oberlinhaus
• involvement of internal and external project partners in transdisciplinary solution approaches