Research

Research Colloqium

A current schedule for our biweekly held research colloquium can be found in this document. (PDF, 222 KB)

Research Projects

Project StoryMachine

Narrative worlds digitally reconnected and recreated. Funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation, and the AHRC, Arts and Humanities Research Council

Narratives are central to our identity formation and cultural understanding. Fairy tales and legends connect generations and cultures. However, the preservation and analysis of these narratives faces new challenges – especially in an age of alternative truths and populist separatism. Traditional digital interventions focus on archiving and digitization. This leaves the connections between traditions, interactivity, and the creation or supplementation of new narratives by the wayside.

This is where StoryMachine comes in. We are creating a system that uses spatial hypertext, i.e., the spatial arrangement of topics, in conjunction with intelligent recommendation systems and generative AI. The result is an interactive platform for users who, together with AI, can dynamically explore, expand, reconnect, and even create narratives. The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index enables us to conduct an in-depth analysis of common motifs and differences between the narrative traditions of different countries.

In summary, StoryMachine is researching new forms of digital creative and informational interaction that go far beyond traditional archiving. Thanks to its user-centered design, StoryMachine not only preserves cultural heritage, but also enables a new type of collaborative knowledge access in which humans and machines create narrative worlds together.

At LMU Munich, Prof. Sarah Diefenbach is leading the project with a focus on interaction design from the perspective of psychological needs. The international consortium's cooperation partners are the University of London (Prof. Dr. Jane Winters, PL Prof. Dr. Christopher Ohge), University of the Arts London (Prof. Dr. Sam Brooker), University of Hertfordshire (Prof. Dr. Owen Davies, Prof. Dr. Ceri Houlbrook), University of Regensburg (Prof. Dr. Astrid Ensslin), and Hof University of Applied Sciences, IISYS (Prof. Dr. Claus Atzenbeck, Lisa Eidloth).

Project duration: February 1, 2025 – January 31, 2028

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Sarah Diefenbach
Project team member: Marie Veihelmann, M.Sc.

Project WiSE

Activating Women in Software Engineering. Funded by the BMFTR, German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space

As part of the “MissionMINT – Women Shape the Future” funding program, the WiSE project aims to inspire female graduates from social science disciplines such as psychology and communication sciences to pursue a career in software development. A central concern here is the promotion of interdisciplinarity and the emphasis on the value of social science skills for the development of innovative technologies. Workshops and a broad-based information campaign establish and promote dialogue between software development companies and talented individuals from the social sciences. In this way, companies can recognize the value of interdisciplinary perspectives, while young professionals can discover their career opportunities in user-centered design and learn more about the profession of holistic software development.

At LMU Munich, Prof. Sarah Diefenbach is leading the project with a focus on an inventory and needs analysis as well as the continuous evaluation of WiSE measures. Cooperation partners are Mainz University of Applied Sciences (Prof. Claudia Nass-Bauer) and Fraunhofer IESE Kaiserslautern.

Project duration: January 1, 2025 – December 31, 2027

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Sarah Diefenbach
Project team member: Mara Hofbauer, M. Sc.

Project VEREINT

Feeling connected through interactive technologies. Funded by the BMFTR, German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space

Connectedness is central to psychological well-being. Connectedness is the "feeling of having regular intimate contact with people who mean something to you, rather than feeling lonely and ignored. In everyday life, this need is satisfied through a variety of practices, e.g., joint activities. Mediating technology (such as telephones and video conferencing systems) also plays an important role in connectedness. The aim of the funding priority “Closeness across distance – enabling interpersonal connectedness with interactive technologies” is to explore forms and concepts of technology-mediated connectedness in application projects.

The accompanying project VEREINT provides theoretical and methodological support for these application projects, systematizes existing knowledge in the form of overviews and method kits, deepens open topics through its own research, networks the application projects with each other, and tests active forms of science communication in the form of citizen laboratories and a library of closeness. The subproject focuses on modeling and developing methods for questions of acceptance of connectedness technologies, as well as developing research formats for networking the application projects.

Project duration: February 1, 2023 – April 30, 2026

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Sarah Diefenbach

Project MOVEN

Motivational and behavior-changing sustainability technologies. Funded by the BMFTR, German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space

The MOVEN junior research group focuses on the active role of technology in encouraging people to adopt environmentally friendly behavior in order to achieve sustainability goals. The interdisciplinary junior research group is led by Dr. Matthias Laschke, University of Siegen. At LMU Munich, Prof. Sarah Diefenbach heads the subproject on the psychological perspective.

The starting points for the project are the goal of reducing individual energy consumption and the fundamental changes in personal lifestyle that this entails. The aim is to incorporate new, more energy-efficient practices into people's everyday lives. In addition to motivation and knowledge about environmentally conscious behavior, designed objects play a central role in almost every everyday practice. Thus, the design of objects is also a starting point for consciously shaping and changing people's actions. For the application areas of process heat (e.g., washing and cooking), hot water, and heating energy, concrete interactive, potentially behavior-changing systems are being designed, prototypically implemented, empirically tested in studies, and reflected upon from an ethical, legal, and social perspective.

Project duration: August 1, 2022 – July 31, 2027

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Sarah Diefenbach
Project team member: Dr. Lara Christoforakos

Project GLOBE 2020

The GLOBE 2020 research program complements the GLOBE Project (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness), which has been known worldwide for 20 years. Between 1994 and 2004, this project examined the relationships between social culture, leadership, and organizational culture in 62 countries around the world with the participation of 200 scientists. This made it one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of its kind worldwide.

The new GLOBE 2020 project builds on the GLOBE findings and supplements the existing data set with many countries and additional research topics. The GLOBE 2020 project will answer new questions over a longitudinal time frame (approximately two decades), e.g., to what extent the national cultures of the N = 62 countries studied to date have changed, and what forces have led to sociocultural changes. The database has been more than doubled (N = 144 countries) and previously underrepresented cultural regions have been extensively added (e.g., African countries and countries in the Middle East). Longitudinal studies (covering a period of approximately 25 years) are now possible with GLOBE 2020. New measurement instruments have also been developed (e.g., trust, gender bias). This allows us to learn even more and more up-to-date information about, for example, differences in the perception of leadership by men and women (worldwide) and about cross-cultural gender differences in leadership behavior, but also about differences between different cultural regions and country groups and how these aspects relate to people's trust in their own culture and in their respective leadership.

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Felix Brodbeck

Project PerforM

Personality for machines in personal intelligent environments. Funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation

Mark Weiser's (1991) vision of “ubiquitous computing” describes a world of networked devices that provide new functionalities through their interaction. For example, the idea of the “smart home” encompasses an intelligent technological environment in the home context that makes the lives of its residents easier and safer. From a technical perspective, this is achieved through a multitude of networked devices that work together using common protocols and standards. However, from a user experience (UX) perspective, the enormous complexity of interacting with these systems is problematic, as it tends to hinder widespread adoption and use. Mark Weiser himself later emphasized a common and understandable interaction paradigm as an important success factor for ubiquitous computing.

This is where the “PerforM – Personality for Machines in Personal Intelligent Environments” project comes in. Instead of many devices perceived as individual entities, it proposes an overarching operating concept for the environment as a whole, using the mental model of a central and omnipresent “room intelligence.” This room intelligence controls existing smart home devices, but can also handle conventional non-smart devices or any physical object in general, using robotic manipulators (e.g., a movably suspended robot arm). The intelligence embodied in this way thus becomes part of the physical environment, blurring the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds.

In summary, PerforM addresses a range of current theoretical and practical research questions in the context of PCEs and human-machine interaction. In addition to the specific challenges of PCEs, our work program also highlights overarching questions about the combination of design features and their impact on the perception of “system intelligence,” the ‘unity’ of a system, and ultimately its “personality.”

Project duration: May 2020 – December 2023

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Sarah Diefenbach (Psychology), Prof. Dr. Andreas Butz (Media Informatics)
Project team members: Ilka Hein, M.Sc., Dr. Daniel Ullrich

Project AIPS

Aesthetics of Performative Interaction for Pervasive Computing Environments in Public Spaces. Funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation

A key challenge in designing pervasive computing environments (PCEs) is to identify general characteristics that can be transferred across devices and domains, while also taking context-dependent requirements into account in order to provide a satisfactory user experience. Our research project deals with the “aesthetics of interaction” in the sense of an interaction that “feels” good because it fits the given context and meets the relevant psychological needs. We apply this approach in the reference scenario of public smart spaces, an area in which a coherent design of PCEs that takes into account experiential aspects and psychological needs seems particularly relevant.

Our research project deals with the “aesthetics of interaction” in the sense of an interaction that “feels” good because it fits the given context and meets the relevant psychological needs. We apply this approach in the reference scenario of public smart spaces, an area in which a coherent design of PCEs that takes into account experiential aspects and psychological needs appears particularly relevant.

While users carry out and experience their own interaction, they also think about how others perceive this interaction and what impression they leave on others. Social acceptance therefore seems to be of crucial importance for the experience and use of public interactive systems. In a series of systematic studies, we will identify psychological needs and specific requirements for positive experiences and interactions in public contexts. Based on this, we will design, prototype, and evaluate interaction concepts in concrete application scenarios (e.g., smart restaurant, airport, residents' registration office).

Project duration: 04/2020 – 03/2023

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Sarah Diefenbach
Project team members: Dr. Stefan Tretter, Dr. Pia von Terzi

Project TransforM

Transparency for machines in personal intelligent environments. Funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation.

Nowadays, intelligent technologies are present in many areas of everyday life. For example, an intelligent lighting system adjusts the lighting mood to our current mood and the tasks of the day, or an intelligent sleep app tells us when to go to bed and calculates the ideal wake-up time. Similarly, we rely on algorithms and their advice in important areas of life such as finance and health. In general, the exact functioning of these technologies remains invisible to us because it takes place “behind the scenes.” We don't need to understand how or why the sleep app concludes that we should go to bed at 11 p.m. As long as it works and we start the day feeling refreshed, it makes our lives easier, and that seems to be the most important thing. On the one hand, opaque technology design is a good thing because it reduces complexity and takes the burden off the user; on the other hand, it creates a certain degree of opacity and thus uncertainty and a lack of autonomy. From a user experience perspective, both extremes—complete opacity and complete transparency—pose problems and are therefore not sensible design goals.

The TransforM project investigates the potential tension between intelligent, invisible, and transparent, understandable technology and a possible optimal degree of transparency. It aims to translate these findings into scalable interaction paradigms for an appropriate level of transparency in ubiquitous computing environments. As an area of application, we focus on the smart home context and so-called room intelligence, which represents the entire environment as a coherent unit with which we can interact as if it were a person. Room intelligence does not appear as an additional element in the room, but represents the room as a whole.

Project duration: 01/2024 – 12/2026