Participation and stakeholder engagement

Sustainable change processes through early involvement

For more than ten years, we have seen participation at Fraunhofer UMSICHT as a process and an ongoing task. Through project-related highlight events, we constantly create new moments of contact between science, companies and society. As pioneers in a sustainable world, we involve users, citizens and stakeholders in research and change processes as early as possible in order to accompany and shape necessary transformation tasks in a participatory manner. By actively involving people, we gain strong partners in dealing with complex issues and change processes.

With our interdisciplinary team, we analyze technologies, products and urban spaces. In doing so, we consider interactions with people and society against the backdrop of global and regional challenges such as climate change, digitalization, circular economy or bio-based economy.

We support and advise you in your individual projects and transformation tasks, e.g. in the optimization of existing products, the adaptation or introduction of new technologies or the development of new strategies, also in a municipal context.

Target group-specific participation methods

We use and expand methods from innovation management, design, psychology, social sciences and applied urban research.

Whether co-creation, interventions, sprints, world café, round tables, user-centered product tests, speculative design, design thinking, exhibitions, focus groups, interviews or online surveys - with our methods we create an open culture of discussion, stimulate creativity and connect different stakeholders. We raise awareness of challenges, take different perspectives into account and create understanding in an atmosphere of trust. Depending on the project objectives, we develop participation concepts for multi-year research projects, studies or individual product tests. We create appealing graphics and impact models or build illustrative models and prototypes to make results and subjects of negotiation as clear and understandable as possible.

These formats and methods benefit from the close cooperation with the technical and systems analysis departments at the institute in the focus areas of Circular Economy, Carbon Management, Green Hydrogen and Local Energy Systems.

Your added value through our holistic approach

Through our work and the independent view of science, we accelerate innovation and make decision-making processes clearer and more robust. Our holistic approach helps you to minimize your risks in product and technology development and to align your strategy sustainably. We integrate the view of people and society into our scientific and technical approaches and into the results in the form of guidelines, options for action, concepts and systematic optimizations, which leads to acceptable solutions for the future.

Places for interaction and participation

We operate three locations with different focuses:

• "Supermarket of Ideas" in Oberhausen city center for citizens as an open workshop and meeting space with a focus on sustainable urban development
• "DEZENTRALE Dortmund - The Glass Laboratory" as an interdisciplinary experimental space for biomaterial research
• "Makerspace" at Fraunhofer UMSICHT in Oberhausen with prototype workshop and exhibition space for interdisciplinary, digital and agile product development

Your way to working with us

We would be happy to create a customized offer for you, develop research projects with participatory elements together with you and look for funding opportunities. Sabrina Schreiner and Simone Krause will be happy to answer any questions you may have.