Data Infrastructure for Community Research
Build open-source tools that put communities in control of their data. Work hands-on with citizen-researchers in Rotterdam, rapidly prototyping features they'll use in real municipal research projects. Design data collection interfaces, visualization dashboards, and governance mechanisms through iterative co-design. Your code becomes part of Data Foundry's ecosystem, creating infrastructure that empowers rather than extracts. Real users, real impact, real-world deployment.
The Challenge
Citizen-researchers in Rotterdam’s Afrikaanderwijk are taking on research commissioned by the municipality. They’re collecting data, conducting interviews, analyzing findings—but they lack the digital infrastructure to manage, analyze, and govern their data on their own terms. Spreadsheets scatter across personal computers. Interview notes sit in notebooks. Photos live on phones. Commercial platforms don’t fit: they extract value rather than empowering communities. Academic research systems aren’t designed for citizen governance. The Cooperative needs a data platform that embodies Data Commons principles—allowing them to store data securely while maintaining collective ownership, analyze and visualize findings without depending on technical experts, share insights selectively, govern decisions democratically, and build institutional memory that persists beyond individual projects.
Your Project: Co-designing Data Infrastructure
TU Delft collaborate with TU Eindhoven on Data Foundry—an open-source platform designed for designerly data practices. You’ll explore how Data Foundry can be adapted to support cooperative consultancy. This is a deeply participatory design project where you’ll work with citizen-researchers throughout their municipality-commissioned investigation, observing their needs in real-time and iteratively building solutions:
- Become embedded: Shadow citizen-researchers during their work, understanding their workflows, data practices, and pain points firsthand
- Assess Data Foundry: Explore the existing platform’s capabilities for data donation, storage, analysis, and visualization—and identify what’s missing for this use case
- Rapid prototyping: Design and develop new features or adapt existing ones—data collection interfaces, analysis dashboards, visualization tools, governance mechanisms
- Test in action: Deploy prototypes for citizen-researchers to use during their live research project, gathering feedback and iterating quickly
- Design for governance: Create interfaces that support collective decision-making about data access, use permissions, and value distribution
What Makes This Special
- 🛠️ Real users, real data – Build tools that citizen-researchers will actually use during their commissioned work
- 🔄 Iterative co-design – Design, test, learn, and iterate in tight cycles with your users
- 🎯 Meaningful technical challenge – Adapt an existing platform while developing new features for a novel use case
- 🌱 Open-source contribution – Your work will become part of Data Foundry's open-source ecosystem
- 🤝 Embedded in community – Experience what it means to design technology with rather than for people
- 📊 Data-centric design – Apply cutting-edge methods from the Data-Centric Design lab
Who We're Looking For
You have solid technical skills—comfortable with web development and prototyping. You’re passionate about empowering communities through technology, experienced with user-centered design methods, and eager to work iteratively. You can balance technical possibilities with user needs, communicate across technical and non-technical contexts, and embrace the messiness of real-world deployments. Bonus points for experience with React/Node.js (Data Foundry’s stack), data visualization, participatory design, working with non-technical users, or interest in data governance. It is a plus if you can conduct research in Dutch, important for stakeholder engagement.
