Projects
With our projects, we impart digital skills, test futures and forge alliances. They contribute to a digital transformation with society at its center.
Speculative objects for social innovation
Shared narratives
How can social innovation be made more visible and accessible? We explore this question and experiment with speculative design to make new narratives of social innovation tangible and easier to understand. For the project Ting, we are designing a speculative object and publishing the process and methodology in a playbook.
Case StudyFuture Lab Winterthurer Musikfestwochen
Speculative objects from the festival future
For its 50th edition, the Winterthur Music Festival dared to look ahead: in a future lab, we worked with 20 participants to develop scenarios and speculative objects from the year 2050. The results show that the future of the festival should be collaborative, sustainable and people-centred.
Case StudySmart City Stadt Zürich
Speculative artefacts from the town hall of the future
In a one-day speculation format, we teamed up with Smart City Zurich and FutureSense to imagine the town hall of the future. The Imagination Design Sprint produced tangible artefacts from the future – from democracy amulets to congratulatory services.
Case StudyNo Future? Playing with the future
Exploring futures through improvisation
Where do we go when we can no longer continue as before? In an era marked by climate crisis and demographic change, technological upheaval, housing shortages and social polarisation, we need new ways of dealing with change. As part of the project ‘No Future? Playing with the Future’, we are collaborating with anundpfirsich and trying our hand at improvisational theatre.
Case StudySurf Safely
Surf Safely
From fake e-banking sites to romance scammers and false real estate ads, more and more people are losing money to various forms of online fraud.
Case StudyDecipher
Strategies against digital surveillance
The increasing surveillance of digital communication poses a massive challenge for politically active people and groups. The Center develops advisory services and workshop formats on the topic of “digital surveillance”.
Case StudyGaming against Extremism
Using Digital Skills to Combat Radicalisation
Together with the Risk Dialogue Foundation, 5am Games and other project partners, we developed an online game that strengthens young people's digital skills. The aim is to sensitise young people to online and offline radicalisation mechanisms.
Case StudyDigital Literacy
Core Competencies for Digital-Opinion Forming
How we form our opinions today is subject to the influence of analogue, but also digital sources. While we usually master the use of the former due to our education and intuition, the necessary skills in dealing with digital information are often insufficiently developed. The Digital Literacy Project teaches skills in a playful and immersive way for a safer opinion making in the digital space.
Case StudyFuturess, Dreaming Beyond AI, Materia Oscura
Fellowship Unwired Currents – Imagining Technologies Otherwise
An online fellowship and public events programme that expands the concept of technology beyond colonial, modernist and solutionist notions.
WebsiteTA-SWISS, HSLU, Musikrat
Three Studies as an Interactive Online Adventure
For the TA-SWISS ‘Culture and Digitalisation’ project, we were able to prepare our own study and two studies by the HSLU and the Music Council in an immersive form. The studies can be explored and discovered in three rooms with an avatar. The most important findings are presented in a playful and multimedia way in the pixel world.
Case StudyShaping Futures worth Living
Experiments with Reduced Working Hours
In the midst of climate and health crises, a shortage of skilled workers and fears of globalisation and digitalisation, Switzerland is facing major challenges. Could fewer working hours be the answer?
Case StudyAudiowalk - Christoph Merian Stiftung
Bytes & Bridges: How is Digitalisation Changing a City?
Digital technologies have long been integrated into our everyday lives, promising efficiency and seamless processes. We often notice them only when disruptions occur, yet they continuously influence how we live together and shape our political system. The audio walk through Basel, developed and produced by Dezentrum, explores this impact across seven stations, making the pervasive presence of digitalisation in daily life visible.
Case StudyTing
A new solidarity system for the 21st century
Digitization and the resulting automation are leading to major upheavals in our work environment. Ting meets this change with a community that allows its members time for further development. Through a joint account, members share more than a quarter of a million Swiss francs every year in order to secure themselves financially during personal advancement.
Case StudySmart City Lab Zürich / Digi+
Digitisation in administrations: From problem to prototype in 12 weeks
The Zurich City Council has set itself the goal of raising the level of digitalisation in the administration with the Digi+ programme from OIZ and Smart City. Together with the team of the city of Zurich, we have carried out a pilot project in the work integration organisation Nähwerk, which uses digital possibilities to support the employees in their daily routine.
Case StudyAI Workshop Dubendorf
Participatory design of an AI workshop for educational institutions
Together for a successful learning experience. With the workshop "AI in education - an interactive, critical discussion", developed together with the Dübendorf primary school, educational institutions are enabled to actively participate in the discourse around generative artificial intelligence, to recognise challenges and to develop strategies for dealing with these tools in the context of education.
Case StudyDigitalLabor
A shared vision of digital Switzerland 2030
Digitalization has been here for a long time. You can neither vote it out nor ignore it. But what does a digitalization that puts society at the centre look like? With the DigitalLabor, we travelled across Switzerland with the question: (How) do you want to digitize Switzerland?
Case StudyEdgelands Institute
Audio Walk through Geneva
Are you afraid of the internet? An audio guide leads you through a walk in Geneva. Five stops highlight how fundamentally digital technologies are changing our lives. The impact no longer ends when we close the laptop.
Case StudyOK Klima
Local climate data for more participation
With the OK Klima, we are building a Switzerland-wide, regional climate rating and a platform that enables climate-conscious individuals and NGOs to take effective and direct action in their communities and cantons. A joint project with the Climate Alliance and Alliance Digitale.
Case StudyInnovation Booster Future Urban Society
The good life within planetary limits
On the way to a climate-friendly Switzerland, the Future Urban Society (FUS) Innovation Booster helps urban, eco-social innovations out of their niche. The program promotes radical ideas in the areas of housing, mobility and nutrition. As a member of the Meso Innovation Alliance, Dezentrum coordinates the project team and project communication.
WebsiteExpedition Zukunft
Postcards from the climate-neutral future
Mobility in Switzerland is to be climate-neutral by 2050. But what exactly will that look like? Together with Expedition Zukunft, we have created five possible future scenarios in the form of postcards. This enabled parliamentarians to immerse themselves in possible futures during a policy sprint.
Case Studym4music
Conference contributions - Music & Digitalisation
Since 2021, we have been working for the m4music Conference at the intersection of music and digitalisation. We advise, suggest conference topics, develop formats, find speakers and give talks.
Case StudyParliamentary Services Canton of Zurich
Collaborative future scenarios for the parliamentary services
What will our work look like in the future? The Parliamentary Services team developed various scenarios to answer this question. Some cautious, some radical. They familiarised themselves with various methods from futures thinking and explored their own assumptions about the future. The all-day scenario technology workshop led to a wealth of insights - which are now being used to develop a new mission statement.
Case StudyNurri
An innovative food brand with maximum transparency
We bring consumers, producers and distributors together directly in a digital participation process. Consumers determine which production criteria should apply to the individual food products and can thus assume their responsibility for sustainable food.
Case StudySatelleth
An autonomous satellite on world tour
Satelleth is a blockchain-based autonomous entity that owns, manages, and independently interacts with its environment. Its goal is to travel around the world. For this journey, Satelleth collects money and pays people for their transportation.
Case StudyForum For Inclusion
A platform for people without voting rights
Dezentrum developed Forum For Inclusion for the Prototype Fund. It is a web application where people without voting rights can share their opinion on national votes. Anonymously and via voice message. The project wants to question who is allowed to participate in the democratic discourse and at the same time experiment with the digital public. Once a year, Opendata.ch's Prototypefund supports projects that aim to strengthen digital participation.
Case StudyNature Park Beverin
Digital transformation and social innovation in Beverin Nature Park
How can the opportunities of digitalization be used in rural areas? To find that out, we have been supporting the Naturpark Beverin in building competencies and projects for social innovation and sustainable digitalization since 2021.
Case StudySECO
Digital Transformation of Unemployment Insurance
SECO’s unemployment insurance compensation office is working on major projects to modernise the IT infrastructure of the unemployment insurance as well as public employment service. The efforts represent the beginning of a comprehensive digital transformation. To get it rolling, digitalisation related to the unemployment insurance compensation fund have been discussed. There was broad agreement on the need for cultural change. It shall be clarified though, to what extent the federal enforcement autonomy can be reconciled with the process harmonisation at national level.
Forum Alpbach
How can Digital Technologies strengthen our Democracies?
Our democracies are under pressure. How should we respond? This question was part of a workshop series during the European Forum Alpbach 2020, organised by Dezentrum and foraus in collaboration with the Open Think Tank Network and Mercator Foundation Switzerland. The aim of the workshops in Zurich, London, Vienna and Berlin was to work on Europe-wide future scenarios.
SwissCovid App Facts
SwissCovid App Facts
For the official SwissCovid Tracing App we have provided an information website which answers the most important questions about privacy, security and technology. Questions such as "Does the app bring me into the sights of the tech companies?" or "Will hackers get into my mobile phone? The campaign was realized together with an alliance of civil society organizations.
