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).
Michael Ertel was born in 1985. He is studying Sociology at the Technical University of Berlin. In 2008 he passed his pre-diploma in the field of Social Psychology, Ergonomics and Science, and Technology Studies. As part of his study, his latest research project was at the airport control center of Tegel Airport. Drawing on the “actor network theory” he collected data to discover and evaluate different communication structures.
Since July 2009 he works “on the ground” for the StreetLab project and is responsible for contacting. In addition, he supports the team with organization and evaluation of user-generated content.