We
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).
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Hybrid Letter Box – Connecting Strangers
The hybrid letterbox easily transforms analog input into digital data and is one of the first access points we designed for our neighborhood infrastructure. The ritualized act of posting a letter is used to bridge the gap between the physical with the digital space. This letter box mirrors our goal that neither prior knowledge nor specific digital devices should be needed in order to take part in the sociopolitical network we are designing in order to enable communities to develop resilient actions. The letter box transfers a hand-written message to a digital platform so the issue can be spread effectively and publics can form around the discourse possibly emerging around it.
The second phase of the project is funded by CHEST: CHEST (Collective enHanced Environment for Social Tasks) is a 33-month Research and Development project supported under the Seventh Framework Programme to promote the development of digital based innovations that have the potential to address key societal challenges. In addition to the development of an online community platform that will facilitate the sharing and exchanging of ideas, the CHEST project has invested up to €2.5 million in seed finance for highly innovative digital based technologies, concepts and systems that address a specific societal challenge. The Berlin University of the Arts has been successful in receiving support through the scheme for the Hybrid Letterbox project.
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