This hub provides educational tools and resources designed to bridge knowledge gaps around the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as smartphones, computers, apps, chatbots or the internet, and their links to ecological and social inequality. At the heart of our approach is digital positionality, a powerful lens for critical reflection one one’s political and eco-socio-digital situatedness.

By engaging with digital positionality, users are invited to explore how their digital experiences are shaped by broader social and ecological systems. This reflection can reveal hidden biases, surface power dynamics, and highlight both obstacles and possibilities within digital environments.

The aim is to inspire and enable people to contribute to responsible, sustainable technological development and actively shape more equitable futures. Through digital positionality, we believe users can become mindful netizens, capable of (re)visioning and working towards alternative, more just digital realities.

The X-Tutorial was inspired by Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR), an approach that emphasizes collaboration and the inclusion of lived experience in the knowledge creation process.

Our research began in autumn 2022 with an exploration of the theoretical foundations of digital positionality, alongside reflections on our own experiences with ICTs. In January 2023, the focus shifted toward the digital positionalities of people from diverse and often underrecognized backgrounds in Berlin.

To explore these perspectives, we worked with a range of qualitative and creative research methods. Using an experimental electronic can phone developed by the Design Research Lab in Berlin, we invited around sixty people from different social milieus to share their thoughts, concearns, and questions about the digital sphere. We also held an in-depth focus group discussion with a diverse group of participants in Berlin, creating space for more sustained reflection on digital experiences. In addition, we organized creative workshops for digital natives at a Berlin community school, using interactive methods to engage with young people’s perspectives.

Through this research, we explored how people perceive, navigate, and relate to ICT in their everyday lives. We encountered the influence of dominant technological discourses, the tensions between convenience and critique, the tendency to rationalize extended use, and the often underexamined digital dependence that shapes our lives.

These insights informed the development of what we termed ‚the cycle of avoidance‘ and led to the formulation of ten qualitative design principles, which became the foundation for the collaborative development of the resources available on this website. Taken together, this multi-perspectival approach helped us engage a wide range of experiences and viewpoints, deepening our understanding of digital positionality across social groups and generations.

Guided by ten design principles derived from our first semester’s fieldwork, we developed three reflexivity tools:

1. A Workshop Guide that facilitates comprehensive reflection on your digital positionality.
2. A Comic, enriched with reflective questions, which serves as a playful mirror to the complexities of digital life, empowering individuals to live with intention and awareness and to shape sustainable futures collectively.
3. Rules of Thumb, a set of ten guiding principles designed to inspire and support you as you navigate the challenges of the digital age.