As the year comes to a close, I am taking a moment to reflect on what we, the HCC team, have accomplished in 2024. This year was again filled with many activities...

HCC Research

In the RAER project, which was awarded with the Max Rubner Prize from the Stiftung Charité, we are collecting patient values, needs, and requirements for patient-centered registration processes and communication support through robotic assistance in emergency departments. Building on this, we received funding from the BMBF for the ILLUMINATION project. In the context of this research, we use a participatory research approach to envision how patients in the emergency department could assess and share their symptoms with medical staff using an LLM-based application with a focus on ensuring privacy.
We have also received BMBF funding for the EMPOWER-U project, in which we will use a participatory design approach to investigate whether and how the meta-consent can empower people when sharing their health data. This research extends  the WerteRadar project on sovereign health data donation which ended this year. This year, we also completed the Freemove project, on privacy-centered urban mobility data. At this year's “Plattform Privatheit” conference, we presented the Freemove Guide - a decision support tool for responsible mobility data projects.

We presented our research at several international and national conferences. At the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW) in San José (Costa Rica), we presented two articles “Advocating Values through Meaningful Participation: Introducing a Method to Elicit and Analyze Values for Enriching Data Donation Practices in Healthcare” and “Communicating the Privacy-Utility Trade-off: Supporting Informed Data Donation with Privacy Decision Interfaces for Differential Privacy”. At the largest German “Mensch und Computer” Conference in Karlsruhe, we showcased the article “Identifying Characteristics of Reflection Triggers in Data Science Ethics Education.” Beyond that, I am glad to mention that my PhD student, Mariam Farda-Sabras, successfully defended her dissertation on “Wikidata: Empowering Diversity for Global Knowledge Accessibility.”

Last but not least, I am very honored to be selected by the editorial team of the Tagesspiegel as one of the “100 Most Important Minds in Berlin Science.” This selection highlights the diverse Berlin’s scientific landscape.

HCC Teaching

In the winter semester 2023/24, our interdisciplinary course “CodingIxD – Expanding: THE BODY” resulted in an interactive exhibition at the Weizenbaum Institute that took place in February. Throughout the course, computer science and product design students faced multiple challenges: They explored the experiential differences in the lived embodiments of individuals and groups, examined body data to cultivate attentiveness to our bodies' information, and translated complex body data into innovative physical artifacts.

During the summer semester of 2024, our students in the “Human-Centered Data Science” course developed interactive user interfaces that convey eXplainable AI in a human-centered approach. In the “Human-Computer Interaction” course, students developed innovative graphical user interfaces driven by large language models.

HCC Team & Activities

We also welcomed two new team members this year. Malte Heiser joined the HCC research group in December. With a strong background in medical applications of computer science, he will strengthen our teaching and research. Jacobe Klein joined us a little later to conduct research in the ILLUMINATION project. Jacobe has a background in mechanical engineering and human factors, which enables her to advance research in human-AI collaboration.

Several activities also enriched our year. In March, we held our annual retreat at Gut Sarnow in Schorfheide. For three days we reflected on our research, discussed our methods, and considered future goals. The retreat culminated in a new mission statement to guide our research efforts.

In May, we participated in Girls' Day, a nationwide event designed to introduce girls to career and college opportunities. During our workshop, teens explored virtual assistants and chatbots, learning about their history and evolution while gaining hands-on experience creating them.

In July, we participated in the Long Night of Science, where we presented five interactive exhibits to the public. Visitors engaged with activities such as the "Beat the Cookie Monster" arcade game, which tests users' ability to recognize deceptive cookie banners, and the "Privacy Oracle," which encourages reflection on digital privacy. Student projects from "CodingIxD - Expanding:THE BODY" were also on display. These projects were also shown later in the tour of the Kunsthochschule Weißensee Berlin.

In October, we hosted the HCC Research Days at Villa Altenstein in Berlin-Dahlem. My four PhD students presented their ongoing projects on reflective human-AI collaboration and consent interfaces. They were joined by three predoctoral fellows from the Charité who expanded on healthcare-related topics through the lens of human-computer interaction.

HCC:2025

Now I look forward to continuing our journey with renewed enthusiasm and curiosity in the year ahead. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to our successes - here's to an exciting 2025!

All the best,
Claudia Müller-Birn