News

We are proud to congratulate Dr.-Ing. Martin Feick from the human-centered systems lab on receiving the prestigious 2026 SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award as part of CHI 2026 in Barcelona.  Martin's doctoral thesis titled “Hand-based Illusions for Haptics in Virtual Reality” was supervised by Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger at the UMTL (Saarland University and DFKI) and Prof. Anthony Tang at Singapore Management University.

Martin’s dissertation advances VR haptics by combining novel hand-based illusions with proxy technology and adaptive personalization.

We are happy to announce that the paper “Designing a mobile chatbot-based learning journaling system for intrinsic motivation and engagement” co-authored by Sven Scheu, Simone Löffler, and Alexander Maedche has been published in the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. The study presents a mobile journaling system with a built-in course and LLM assistant; results show the course boosts motivation, while the assistant increases engagement over time.

The Institute for Information Systems (WIN) will be represented with four research papers at the 21st International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST), taking place in Münster! Congratulations to all authors on their contributions to the design science community. We look forward to insightful discussions and meeting you in Münster! For further information, please contact the authors directly or visit the websites of the respective research groups (https://www.win.kit.edu/about_us.php)

The ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) Conference is the premier international event for researchers, designers, and artists to debate and shape the future of interactive systems, design practice, and HCI. Three papers of our group got accepted: “Who Did What? Designing Avatars for Explainable Multi-Agent Systems in Knowledge Work” “MorphHat: A Humanoid Robot Interpreter for Enhancing Multilingual Collaboration”. “(AI)ming For Harmony: Designing Future AI Teammates for Human Conflict Resolution”

As part of Girls' Day 2026, doctoral students from the human-centered systems lab offered a workshop for schoolgirls. In the workshop, they learned how to recognize human emotions using biosignals capturing human activity such as heart or gaze activity on the basis of sensor technologies. Following a human-centered design process, the schoolgirls worked together in teams to explore the context of use, articulate user  needs and requirements, create a prototypical emotion-adaptive app and evaluate it with users.

Electronic Markets accepted the paper “Biosignal-Adaptive Platforms” co-authored by Mario Nadj, Alexander Maedche, Rene Riedl, Julia Seitz, and Tanja Schulz as a Fundamentals contribution for publication. 

Personalization is a well-established concept that leverages a wide range of user data to tailor digital platforms to target audiences. Advances in sensor technologies now allow continuous recording of human activities. The resulting biosignals can be processed and interpreted in real time enabling closed-loop adaptation and deeper individualized personalization.

Luke Shi Liu successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Designing Gaze-Adaptive Immersive Learning Support“ on April 23rd, 2026. His work contributes to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Education Technologies by a conceptual framework for mixed reality system design in higher education, empirical insights on improving learner’s attention and learning outcomes through gaze-adaptive support, and set of innovative artifacts for cross-device and gaze-adaptive support in immersive learning. 

The Institute for Information Systems (WIN) will be represented with 10 full papers at the 34th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), which will take place in June in Milan (Italy) in 2026.  
Beyond the full paper track, WIN researchers are also active in additional conference formats that provide dedicated spaces for emerging research (TREO) and support early-stage and early-career scholars through the doctoral consortium and the junior faculty consortium. 
Congratulations to all participating researchers from WIN! 

Karlsruhe’s Mayor, Gabriele Luczak-Schwarz, is calling on people in and around Karlsruhe to sign up for the citizen panel “Wir forschen digital”: “Wir forschen digital is a great way to get involved in research without any barriers. Give it a try—whether you’d like to participate once a year or on a regular basis. Every contribution matters.” With “Wir forschen digital”, you can participate in studies on digital technologies and experience current research firsthand. After registering on the online portal, you’ll receive regular invitations to exciting studies: You can participate on your own schedule. 

As the opening event of this year's ANYMOS KI:NO summer series, we cordially invite you in collaboration with Triangel to the Kinemathek Karlsruhe on April 23rd at 7 pm, where we will immerse ourselves in the dystopian vision of "Blade Runner 2049." This science fiction film, with its breathtaking visuals, atmospheric music, and captivating story, once again raises questions about artificial intelligence, identity, and humanity.

We welcome Maria Rothvoss Buchheimer as a new team member and doctoral researcher at the Institute for Information Systems (WIN) as part of the human-centered systems lab (h-lab). Maria gained broad and hands-on experience in project management, immersive technologies and user experience through her previous professional roles at AMERIA AG and Siemens AG. Maria holds a Master of Science degree in Digital Management & Transformation and a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Computer Science.

Mental health disorders affect a significant share of the global population. Meeting the resulting demand for care is a challenge on two fronts: patients face long waiting times and limited access to support, while mental health practitioners work under significant time pressure with processes that are often still manual and fragmented. Two developments in AI offer complementary responses: AI-based process digitalization can make clinical and therapeutic workflows more efficient for practitioners, while conversational AI agents can extend therapeutic support directly to those who need it.