As part of the international block week, students on the international Master's degree program in Digital Transformation put their creative and technical skills to the test in the "Innovation-driven Software Engineering" course. Using design thinking methods, they developed innovative solutions for specific challenges in the smart city sector.
A central theme of this year's block week was the improvement of urban traffic infrastructure. Under the motto "Empowering Citizens to Improve Urban Road Quality and Safety", the challenge aimed to enable citizens to actively contribute to improving road quality and road safety.
The focus was on problems such as potholes, uneven roads, inadequate lighting and insufficient cycle and pedestrian paths. These not only impair the quality of life, but also increase the safety risk for all road users - from pedestrians and cyclists to motorists.
The students considered different perspectives - from cyclists and pedestrians to people with disabilities - and designed visionary approaches that could incorporate modern technologies such as AI-controlled drones or innovative sensor technology to improve the efficiency and accuracy of maintenance measures.
Finally, on the last day of the block week, Domain-Driven Design (DDD) was introduced, a method that showed the students how to develop concrete software solutions from their ideas. By linking specialist and technology domains, the participants were able to learn how to structure and translate complex requirements in order to create innovative, tailor-made software products. This hands-on immersion helped to transform the creative concepts generated during the week into tangible, implementable digital solutions - a valuable conclusion to a week of intense teamwork, inspiration and innovation.