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).
Design Driven Artificial Intelligence (DDAI) continuously gains more significance in the development of human-centred applications. In recent years, the implementation of technology especially focussed on growth and technological progress, the inclusion of users and human-centred requirements faded into the background. With the help of DDAI we aim to advance the development of new technologies by utilizing machine learning as well as Human Sensitivity.
Hence, we develop applications and products that are meant to be integrated not just as technological supplements but as active elements for the functioning of the communities where the users participate. Given that DDAI includes social, cultural and ethical considerations from the very beginning, DDAI solves problems in their cause rather than their consequences. Through this project we aim to investigate the state of the art and suggest future directions for the further development of the concept.