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).
Fabian Hemmert is a design researcher, born and raised in Germany. During his studies towards an M.A. degree in Interface Design at Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, he worked for Nintendo of Europe and Marvel Comics. He holds doctorate in engineering (Dr.-Ing.) from the Berlin University of the Arts.
Fabian’s TED talk on mobile phones of the future has been watched more than 700.000 times and translated into 35 languages. It can be watched here:http://on.ted.com/9Czr