KISDinterface design

People depend on, adapt to and shape their environments, whether digital, built, social or ecological, and are shaped by them in return. These reciprocal relationships are the starting point of our work. Human and non-human actors, from citizens, plants and animals to sensors, platforms and infrastructures, are part of systems and networks that influence each other. Digitalization makes this connectedness pervasive and ubiquitous. After decades of interfaces in user- and human-centered design, we look at different types of actors in their context of interdependencies, interactions and relations within a bigger network.

For specific questions, such as food systems, we frame and explore these relationships, networks and systems. We look at both the systems as a whole and their touchpoints, the places where people and other actors meet and interact, and we look for leverage points, where small interventions can change a lot. This is where interface design comes in: interfaces can be spaces of interaction or physical, digital and hybrid touchpoints between human and non-human actors within networks. We therefore ask not only about human activities, experiences or the functioning of things, but also about the distributed actions of human and non-human actors. How can citizens engage in specific environments and contexts? How can participation be designed? How can action be based on informed decisions in a complex world, in filter bubbles and post-truth societal contexts?

We work with mappings, scenarios, interventions and prototypes to shape analog, digital and hybrid products, services and systems. Interfaces are both our object and our method: we design them, and we use them to make systems visible and open to participation. We use ethnographic approaches to explore human (and non-human) needs and perspectives in specific urban, rural or community contexts. Intercultural and international collaborations add further dimensions to our understanding of problems.

Since 2018, a research focus has been on cities, urban environments and digitalization, see the research group »Real-Time City« at KISD. From there, our work has extended to our wider relationship with our environments: how we shape them, depend on them and can interact with them. During a one-year research stay in Barcelona in 2023/24, aimed to explore adaptivity and proximity in food systems. Knowledge of the food system helps urban consumers to obtain food literacy and shows leverage points by reconnecting them along the food chain with the origins of their food. In 2025, the living lab SpeiseWald Süd, a local food forest in Cologne, enabled us to explore a very specific local ecosystem. This work is embedded in a global network of (mostly) academic experts and practitioners around the food system. In 2026, we started to work on Designing Regenerative Relationships: Water and (Eco)Systems, which aims to build a global project network for sharing and learning through water-related eco-social design projects.