The Design Research Lab is a network of people, organisations, and non-human agents engaged at the intersection of technologies, materials, and social practices. Our aim is to design socially and ecologically sustainable tools, spaces, and knowledge that support people’s participation in a digital society – based on common principles of inclusiveness and respect for the planet. This puts the basic democratic right to take part in the digital sphere into practice. We start our research from individual lifeworlds and the needs of minoritized groups, beyond consumer majorities.
We are an interdisciplinary team of designers, researchers, tech-enthusiasts and critical thinkers from Berlin University of the Arts, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, as well as Einsteincenter Digital Future (ECDF).
Experimental Approach to Local Surroundings
De-Routing is an explorative workshop concept and application that highlight walking as a tool to explore neighborhoods. With the application, local surroundings can be approached in an experimental and explorative way. Additionally a change of perspective is taking place through a specific focus like “barriers”, “thresholds” or “gatherings”. The insights are collected in a collaborative map in which barriers, contact and conflict zones are marked and discussed. The application was developed within the Community Now? project.