I study how people perceive, trust, and live with the technologies that are reshaping work, learning, and health — and how to design the ones worth living with.
I am senior research associate at the Chair of Communication Science and the Human-Computer Interaction Center (HCIC) at RWTH Aachen. My research focuses on interactive media and the human-centered digital transformation of learning, work, and health across the lifespan of individuals. I aim to design digital media that are understandable, useful, and trustworthy.
I have investigated interactive textiles in the BMBF project IntuiTex and developed Serious Games and studied decision complexity in the Excellence Cluster “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries”. In the follow-up Excellence Cluster “Internet of Production” (IoP), I led the work package on Functional Perspective on implementing data-to-knowledge and knowledge-to-data pipelines, making production-related data accessible and actionable for humans and AI. There, I also headed the Integrated Graduate School, which promoted interdisciplinary collaboration between mechanical engineering, materials science, computer science, and the social sciences.
My research interests include the design of interactive systems, Serious Games and Gamification for training, knowledge transfer, and the study of human experience and behavior. Further areas of focus include mental models, trust and acceptance of new technologies, technology mapping, usage patterns, and acceptance of artificial intelligence.
I studied computer science with specializations in psychology and human computer interaction at RWTH Aachen. For my PhD in communication science, awarded the Borchers Medal, I developed and evaluated Serious Games for health promotion in technology-assisted living environments for older adults.
Examples
Papers describe things; they rarely show them. Projects with the artefacts attached — games, instruments, textiles, maps — each linking to the work it produced.
-
Interactive textiles
Interfaces woven into curtains, sofas and clothing — and whether anyone wants them there.
-
Serious games for older adults
Exercise and cognitive-training games for assisted living, and the acceptance question underneath them.
-
Mapping acceptance
Putting dozens of technologies on one map of perceived risk, benefit and value.
-
Generative AI in conjoint studies
An open platform that lets a conjoint study generate its own stimuli.
-
Serious games for production
Turning supply chains and quality management into something you can play, and therefore study.
-
Data-to-knowledge pipelines
Trajectories from three laboratories, pooled openly, trained into one reusable model.
Publications
Nanos gigantum humeris insidentes. We see further by standing on the shoulders of giants — which only works if we write our findings down, discuss them with others, and others can build on them.
Research threads
Seven strands, most of them still running. Each links to the papers that belong to it, and every paper links back to the threads it belongs to.
-
Public Perception of AI
What the public actually expects, fears, and values in artificial intelligence — and how far that sits from what experts believe.
-
Trust, Agency & Human–Robot Interaction
What happens to trust, agency, and a sense of control when people work beside machines that are usually — but not always — right.
-
Human Factors in Cyber-Physical Production
Making industrial data legible to the people who have to act on it, and putting the human back into cyber-physical production.
-
Measuring Technology Acceptance
Building the instruments — micro scenarios, conjoint designs, semantic differentials — that make "would people accept this?" an answerable question.
-
Privacy, Life-Logging & Personal Data
What people will trade for convenience, who refuses, and why the refusers are not simply behind the curve.
-
Serious Games & Learning
Games as instruments — for teaching hard ideas, for training decisions under complexity, and for extracting knowledge that experts cannot articulate.
-
Interactive Textiles & Assisted Living
Interfaces that disappear into curtains, sofas, and clothing — and whether the people meant to live with them actually want to.