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).
Miriam Lahusen joined the team of the Design Research Lab at the University of the Arts Berlin in 2013. In her capacity as junior researcher, she investigates wicked problems such as questions of sustainability, responsibility and diversity that occur when smart technologies are implemented in daily life. In her practical based research she implements the methodology of design in participatory, user-centered workshops.
At the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) Miriam is conducting the research project TexaS, dealing with the arising contradictions when smart technologies encounter textile requisitions in different fields of application. Apart from her research, she teaches design methodology at HTW University of Applied Science and Anhalt University. In 2011, Miriam graduated as Meisterschüler from the Weißensee Academy of Art, Berlin.