Two days of various insights into design research methods and reflections on how design should and could position itself within the context of global challenges as a discipline embracing innovation and solution oriented quest were followed by a colloquium of one of the society’s themes “design promoviert”, where PhD-students and aspirants can present their topics and questions for high quality feedback. I did so and with my still very basic state of research and ideas actually initiated a new format to invite novices with the urge to do research into the arena of the academic research community. It was great to talk about my thoughts and receive very empathic and dedicated feedback. Definitely coming around again!

My crazy day trip to Vienna was totally worth it, not only did I meet very interesting designers and researchers at the UNDESIGN Symposium but also did I find my own ideas and thoughts about the state of design confirmed. Considering our complex contemporary world of crisis and “peak everything”, as Dr. Catharine Rossi put it, Design needs to take on new tasks. The presentations showed current directions that all question our doings in the anthropocene and suggest a reductive, redistributing, craft and repair-focused approach. The speakers agreed that design has always been a collective social project and that a critical view on things have always been inherent to design. The discussions reminded me a lot of Fritjof Capra’s writings where he describes the transition from the human centered anthropocentric perspective to the ecocentric world view, in which we understand ourselves as inseparable from our habitat and the need to protect it. It was an intense and inspiring day in Vienna, too dense to summarize it really.

Nadia El- Imam from Edgeryders and Daniel Kruse from Open State are going to give us insights and case studies on how to build our future with open, collaborative and interdisciplinary networks. Very much looking forward to that evening! Thanks again to Designtransfer, UdK for giving it a stage.

Sabine Junginger and Caroline Paulick-Thiel both did an amazing job in explaining the complexity of policy making and how designers can get involved and how design can and should grow into the realm of social transformation. They are both involved with the initiative politics for tomorrow. Looking forward to further cooperation! Thanks to Designtransfer UdK to make this evening happen.

We had a very intense 3 day kick-off workshop in Sauen with 11 product design and 10 GWK students diving into the topic of #OpenCare and how this relates to hacking, people on the move, mental resilience, food cultures and their own lives. The project is contributing its research and design results to the project OP3N CARE, which is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 framework programme. We have very ambitious goals: working interdisciplinary within the university and in collaboration with the online community Edgeryders, this project is rooted in a real world context. StartNext is another partner, offering us input and support to create high quality campaigns to crowdfund the design results. Those will be shown at designtransfer, UdK in July 2016 and in a final exhibition of the research project in Milan and London in 2017. Another great opportunity for the students is the chance to apply for a fellowship to get further support on their ideas, e.g. by CERN. To find out about the project, visit the  OP3N Care Community for deep content and interest in the research or the Hacking Utopia website for a general overview of our project work

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