Media Design Lab is vital for students and researchers alike
The new Media Design Lab is a creative and innovative environment in which students, researchers, designers, and lecturers can learn, experiment, create, and teach. It boasts a laboratory with a replica living room for observation, VR and AR tools, social robots, rooms with cameras, a 3D printer, and soon a laser cutter. There is also a one-person cubicle for controlled experiments using functional EMG, skin conductor sensors, and eye-tracking. Nynke van der Laan PhD and Hendrik Engelbrecht Msc manage the lab and are watching it grow.
Van der Laan: “The New Media Design track of the Communication and Information Sciences program really needed a setting to put learnings into practice and to create room for experimenting. And that offers access to the necessary tools for media design and research.”
The facilities can be used for a wide range of individual and group experiments to investigate user experience, the design process, and media effects.
The lab stimulates the creative research process: researchers can try things out
Papers based on research lab
“Many state-of-the-art techniques are available here. The VR lab has VR headsets and trackers that create a full body illusion. These tools can be used to experience what it is like to have a body that has to deal with the consequences of overeating (obesity). The lab stimulates the creative research process: researchers can try things out.
Although the lab was opened in the midst the Covid-19 pandemic and lab research was put on hold for a while, many major findings from research conducted in the Media Design Lab have since been published. In addition, many students use the lab for their graduation research. One example is the project of researchers Jan de Wit and Alwin de Rooij and MSc student Julia Geerts; they explored whether brainstorming with a robot facilitator generates more solutions to a problem than does brainstorming with a human facilitator.”
Media Design Lab
The Media Design Lab is part of the Communication & Cognition Department of the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences. It is located on the first floor of Dante Building in rooms D11 and D12. Staff and students of the department can use the lab during office hours on working days.
To reserve lab facilities or equipment, please contact lab support through dcclab@tilburguniversity.edu.
Date of publication: 2 June 2022