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).
As design researcher Jennifer Schubert explores the intersection between technology, participation and collectivity. Her research interest spans from digital inclusion, glocalised networks to boundary objects. In her dissertation about »Civic Tools for Informal City Making« she explored new possibilities of visual and tangible forms of participation. Prior to that, she studied Design Theory and Research at Köln International School of Design and at Parsons New School for Design, New York.
She co-founded the research group »Civic Infrastructures« and worked in research projects like »Neighborhood Labs« (2011-2015), »Community Now?« (2013-2016), »Participatory City Brandis« (2015-2017) and »Citizens connect Neighborhoods NRW« (2016-2018) in rural as well as urban spaces. Currently she is researcher in the three year funded BMBF project »Interpart« (2018-2021) exploring possible ways of participation for post migrant society in urban planning processes.
She has been teaching Interface Design, Participatory Design and Design Methods in Bozen, Dessau, Wuppertal, Cologne and Berlin.