Design of Empowering Systems

Research Vision

The cluster creates interactive systems that employ technology to promote inclusion and self-development and bridge divides created by new technologies such as big data and AI. People with special needs, children, elderly, or patients suffering from chronic conditions are often not only disempowered by their limitations, but also by existing social structures. Socio-technical systems, such as social media and surveillance using AI, may accentuate such disadvantages.

The cluster wants to realize its vision through empowerment-oriented research projects. These projects run in various application areas (e.g., energy, preventive healthcare, city planning) and at diverse scales (from home to safety-critical to multiple-stakeholder contexts), and they use various data-based technologies (e.g., body sensors, augmented reality, AI, digital twins). The cluster uses the insights from the research projects to develop methods for designing empowering systems and ways of adapting these methods to different areas, scales and technologies.

Research Identity

The cluster builds on a rich research tradition at ID relating to technologies for children, elderly, rehabilitation and education. It draws on theoretical foundations of systems thinking, socio-technical design, behavior change, and play and learning. It extends existing participatory design methods so they can use big data and AI.

Care-On is a patient-centered platform that helps heart patients monitor their lifestyle. It has a wrist-worn health watch that is connected to a chatbot on a smartphone. By enabling heart patients to track their daily lifestyle behavior and personal goals, Care-On can empower them to actively improve their health and quality of life.

When children suffer from sleep problems, clinicians usually ask the parents to keep a written diary of their child’s sleep. Snoozy is a chatbot-based sleep diary for children that empowers children as stakeholders in their own healthcare. The system can provide more reliable reports than the diaries written by parents. The project produced insights into how we can use chatbots for collecting personal health information from children.