Participatory IT Design
Summary overview of PIT and our activities (fold-out)
The Department of Participatory IT Design (PIT) is dedicated to a more socially just, value-oriented digital transformation. PIT's research and teaching are highly interdisciplinary at the intersection of computer science, social sciences and humanities, and design and artistic research.
We address issues of participation in digital transformation and seek to advance self-determination and inclusion through participatory approaches, critical reflection, and methodological innovation in IT and AI design.
PIT's interdisciplinary team is led by Prof. Dr. Claude Draude.
Research at PIT is focused on developing design applications, theories and methodologies that foster participatory interdisciplinary approaches to IT systems design. We aim at enabling scientific and design advances that promote fairness and social justice in the sociocultural transformations brought about by digitalization. Our research is situated in the field of human-computer interaction and adjacent fields, including interactions between human and AI systems, such as user experience (and algorithmic experience) of AI, ease of use, explainability, transparency, literacy, controllability, human-computer task distribution; usable security; accessibility; ethics and values.
In line with our research, our teaching activities offer interdisciplinary courses bridging social sciences/humanities and informatics. To address digital transformation in contemporary culture and society fully, knowledge of the workings of digital systems is needed alongside an understanding of their societal impact. In our teaching we cover both fields with a focus on sociotechnical aspects of computing and the intersection of social diversity and digitalization.
The key aim is to provide a translational space for students to learn about knowledge and methods from the social sciences/humanities and explore how these can inform methodology, design, and development of just, fair, and usable IT systems.
PIT is part of the interdisciplinary Research Center for Information System Design (ITeG) which focuses on socially responsible IT design. We promote responsible, socially sustainable digitalisation through collaboration with academic institutions, associations and industry partners, including: Kassel Institute for Sustainability, German Informatics Society (GI), ZEVEDI - Centre Responsible Digitality.