Purpose
Designing Human Technologies consists of many researchers and research groups, each having well-established activities, but also having different networks, research domains, backgrounds, approaches and theoretical frameworks.

The purpose is to establish and strengthen a common research identity at RUC, comprising all academic resources with design interests. The goal is for Designing Human Technologies to become a new hallmark for RUC by 2016 and at the same time to constitute one of RUC's beacons in interdisciplinary research.

The research initiative should create the best possible conditions for researchers to meet, exchange findings and experiences, set up collaborations and carry out joint projects across research groups and departments. The strategy is to enable the currently existing well-established research groups representing the many different epistemological and ontological theories at RUC to enter into dialogue in order for synergies to develop.

The focal point of the research initiative should be research. There should, however, also be support for the development of new graduate and PhD programmes targeting the HumTek area.

Change and innovative thinking
Designing Human Technologies is a design-oriented Strategic Research Initiative supporting Roskilde University’s new Humanities and Technology bachelor programme (‘HumTek’), and its three dimensions: Design, Humanities, and Technology. The research initiative involves many researchers from different departments and research groups at Roskilde University through a shared interdisciplinary research and educational collaboration. As a creative research initiative it focuses on change and innovative thinking. The innovativeness is a result of the strongly interdisciplinary perspective which is at the heart of Designing Human Technologies. This research field thus cuts across the four main areas of the Humanities, the Social Sciences, the Technical Sciences and the Natural Sciences and involves RU researchers with all four perspectives.

Designing Human Technologies is a design-oriented research field, the purpose of which is to be constructive (to make designs) and solution-oriented in close dialogue with citizens and users (who identify a need or a problem). The university's special contribution toward fulfilling this purpose is

• (1) to provide an analysis of the relevant issue,
• (2) to design solutions for particular issues through, for example, action research and
• (3) to reflect on how designs are used and incorporated in human lives.

We have a basic human principle that users, target groups, and other central stakeholders must participate in the design and the design process, in ethical and society-related concerns, and in evaluating how designs fulfill needs and solve problems. Designing Human Technologies subscribes to a broad technology concept including information and communication, mobile, environmental/sustainable and energy technologies and technologies relating to performances and experiences, urban design, climate adaptation, etc.