Students of the Bachelor's program "Nonprofit, Social and Health Management" are currently working on the research project "Smart Inlcusion", which resulted from a cooperation between MCI | The Entrepreneurial School® and Lebenshilfe Tirol. The aim of the project is to offer clients of Lebenshilfe access to technology that can be used to support them in their everyday lives. In particular, smart glasses based on augmented reality are used. Since previous applications have mainly been used to support selected work processes in industrial activities, this project is intended to provide approaches for application scenarios in everyday situations.
The goal of Smart Inclusion is primarily to promote self-determination and, by means of technical support, to enable impaired people to live as independently as possible in accordance with their needs. The Smart Glasses should help the clients to cope with challenges in everyday life independently. The promotion of independence also relieves the burden on relatives, carers and nursing staff. The project is currently in its initial phase and is expected to be completed by mid-2023.
To achieve the overall goal of the project, a mixed-methods approach is used. Students of the NSGM program are contributing to the achievement of the first two milestones in the current project semester with their elaborations. Accordingly, the first step is to record the current state of research and prepare it bibliometrically. In order to work out the possible application scenarios of the technology in everyday life, qualitative research methods will be used in a further step.
The "Digital Transformation" research unit is the focus of this cooperation. The project is being led by Magdalena Posch, a staff member in the MCI Department of Management, Communication & IT. She and Lukas Kerschbaumer, MCI lecturer and researcher at the Center for Social & Health Innovation, are the primary contact persons for the project team. Lorenz Kerer is the central contact person on behalf of Lebenshilfe.
With their research work, the Bachelor students Annika Mayerhofer, Nicole Huber, Magdalena Langegger and Andrea Planatscher can be part of a social-technological revolution that will move far beyond the boundaries of Smart Inclusion.
Students of the project team could try out the Hololens2 Smart Glasses and dive into the world of augmented reality. Photo: MCI/Andrea Planatscher
