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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Dr. phil. Florian Sametinger
Alumni
Florian Sametinger is a senior design researcher, lecturer and project lead at the Design Research Lab of the Berlin University of the Arts. His research revolves mostly around participation and co-design, sustainable design and digital transformation. He recently completed his PhD titled “Sustainable Design by Default – towards an action repertoire for transformation”. He co-founded the research group Civic Infrastructures at the Design Research Lab as well as the Sustainable Design group of the DGTF. In his work, he has been involved in numerous BMBF and EU projects where he focused mainly on participatory methodology, approaches to co-creation as well as sustainability in practice.
Furthermore he has collaborated with Design Inquiry on various international projects including “Design Cities Berlin”. Before joining the Design Research Lab, he studied Interaction and Industrial Design at the Brunel University of West London, the Politecnico di Milano and the University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg and has also worked as an independent Interaction Designer focusing on interdisciplinary design projects with an emphasis on sustainability, social design and user experience.