Can we use AI to explain its reasoning so that humans can systematically learn from it? Imagine new physicians being taught to detect cancer on X-ray images by the AI system pointing out suspicious spots. Or AI providing second opinions even to advanced radiologists. This opportunity would enable us to use AI to learn even when existing knowledge is either not explicit or when teaching by rare experts does not scale.
 

As part of the Girls’ Day 2025, the workshop ”App Development Made Easy” provided insights into the emerging field of processing and analyzing biosignals captured by sensors from mainstream mobile apps to recognize emotions and design emotion-adaptive apps for daily life of students.

The positioning paper “Continuous Value Shaping – A Framework for Interdisciplinary Service Innovation” has been published in Vol. 35 of Electronic Markets.

In today’s dynamic environment—shaped by rapid technological progress and evolving societal expectations—service innovation is becoming increasingly complex. Traditional, discipline-specific approaches often fall short in addressing the multifaceted challenges of future-oriented value creation.

In this paper, we systematically reviewing and synthesizing 

the existing literature on the machine-learning-based recognition of user traits and states using eye-tracking data. The data synthesis included a conceptual framework that covered the task, context, technology and data processing, and recognition targets.

We are happy to welcome Prof. Dr. Werner Kunz from University of Massachusetts, Boston giving a research talk on "The Future of Work – Understanding the Collaboration Between Humans and Machines".
 
This talk explores the evolving collaboration between human and digital employees in service contexts. As AI and service robots become more prevalent, understanding how humans and machines can effectively work together is crucial. 

Felix Kretzer successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Designing AI-Based Graphical User Interface Prototyping Assistants“ on March 27th 2025. His work contributes to the fields of human-computer interaction and information systems engineering by providing design knowledge for LLM-based GUI prototyping assistants. His findings present insights for both researchers and practitioners, enabling them to more effectively create GUI prototypes and on this basis ultimately better software systems. 

Christian Boos, Global VP and Head of Sustainability Innovation at SAP and Prof. Alexander Mädche signed a research collaboration agreement on human-centered AI for sustainable business on March 18th 2025. The collaboration focuses on designing human-centered AI-based assistants supporting sustainability professionals in their daily work to protect our planet while driving efficient businesses. As part of the collaboration multiple design science research cycles are performed.

Moritz Langner successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Gaze-adaptive LLM-based Reading and Writing Assistants“ on March 10th 2025. His work contributes to the human-computer interaction body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence on the feasibility of eye-based cognitive state recognition and designing gaze-adaptive LLM-based assistants. The thesis project was carried in association with the DFG-funded KD2School (https://kd2school.info/) 

The Institute for Information Systems (WIN) will be present with four full papers and three late-breaking work papers at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction and will be held from April 26th to May 1st in Yokohama, Japan (https://chi2025.acm.org/). 

This week, we had the pleasure of hosting researchers from Fraunhofer ISST, TU Braunschweig, TU Dortmund, Universität Stuttgart, and LMU at KSRI, KIT for an in-depth workshop on digital sustainability and circular economy. Over the past two days, we explored how digital technologies, platforms, and AI can accelerate the circular economy while addressing critical regulatory and governance challenges. Our discussions focused on three key areas:

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and IBM are expanding their long-standing collaboration with the aim to jointly develop and strengthen digital innovations and support young talents in science and industry. The official launch of this new strategic cooperation was on January 09, 2025. The organizations have set the focus on the promotion of joint research in fields such as “Digital Innovations for Services and Platforms,” “Artificial Intelligence (AI),” and “Human-Machine Collaboration.” To this effect, a tenure-track professorship supported by IBM will be established at KIT’s recently founded Institute for Information Systems (WIN), helping KIT and IBM encourage the active dialog between science, business, and society about developments in technology and their impact.

Burnout, depression, anxiety disorders - more and more people suffer from mental illness. Because access to psychotherapy is limited, some are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Chatbots show great potential. But does the technology lack the necessary empathy?  

In a recent podcast of Deutschlandfunk Florian Onur Kuhlmeier talks about our research at the human-centered systems lab (h-lab).