The Super Ordinary Lab explores approaches towards meaningful technological innovation using, namely, a variety of foresight tools and techniques as well as more traditional qualitative research methodologies, drawing particularly on ethnographic methods. While innovating on techniques for innovation, it examines the technological landscape of today and tomorrow, looking at near-to market or just-in market technologies to understand their social significance and possibilities. Research projects aim to understand the originating (and exploratory) cultures of production as well as potential users of specific products and/or technologies.

 

OUR MISSION:
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The Super Ordinary Lab is dedicated to what might be. It’s purpose is to articulate, promote, and catalyze meaningful change through innovation and interventions. Whether in experience design of future applications of technologies, or in outcome inquires on social cleavages, the lab deploys a myriad of techniques to determine the best possible strategies, points of intervention, and design directions.  

This includes investigating near to market or just-in market technologies to understand their social significance and possibilities. It studies processes for innovation and sets the direction for change. At base, it fuses ethnographic and foresight techniques, and expands this toolkit through experimenting and documenting traditional and newer approaches.

 

OUR RESEARCH FOCUS:
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  • What are the varying agendas for technological innovation (which may be commercial, social, or artistically driven)?
  • How are these formulated by their authors as reflecting a particular social (or moral vision), if at all?
  • What conflicts or challenges are encountered in attempting to change technological forms; what are the implicit parameters of experimentation? 
  • How can we understand changes in the world today (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, and Cultural) and develop technologically enabled responses to shape a better future?
  • How can everyday lives be transformed by technological innovation?