Eudaimonia, rooted in ancient Greek philosophy, denotes a state of flourishing characterized by realizing one's full potential, virtue, and meaning in life. In contemporary conversation, human flourishing is more than the absence of distress. It involves a sense of purpose, accomplishment, and well-being. This concept is relevant in sociotechnical digital design—the creation, implementation, and use of digital technologies to support people in achieving their goals.
CHERISH is a knowledge co-creation hub with a good mix of technological, methodological, and domain expertise:
- Technological expertise: Extended reality, intelligent agents, conversational agents, decision support systems, non-fungible token (NFT), educational robots, immersive training, hybrid physical-digital systems, and agentic information systems.
- Methodological expertise: Participatory design, design science research, experiment, semiotic analysis, grounded theory method, and artifact analysis.
- Domain expertise: Interface design, health and care services, education design, sustainability transformation, experience economy, digital offerings, digital innovation, and hybrid work.
PhD programme in Social Sciences
CHERISH thematic areas
The choice of four thematic areas is aligned with the research strategy of Department of Information Systems as well as Faculty of Social Sciences. We are interested in designing socio-technical digital technology and its use for well-being, education, and humanistic pursuits. With the pervasiveness of digital technology in our everyday lives, we need to advocate for human flourishing as the ultimate goal of digital design.
Thematic area #1: Socio-technical by design
Digital technology should be viewed as a sociotechnical system. Its design should consider both the social and the technical components. Recent discourse on sociotechnical design in Information Systems unveiled the importance of understanding pragmatic and humanistic goals of using digital technology. Our first thematic area joins the ongoing discourse in exploring different assumptions, approaches, and components of socio-technical design of digital technology.
Thematic area #2: Digital design for well-being
One of our society’s most urgent challenges is the promotion of good health and wellbeing. This thematic area contributes by addressing the design of digital services for wellbeing that promotes abilities such as awareness, self-determination, social participation, and mental health. This will be achieved through participatory methods and with a focus on the inclusion of marginalized groups. Our primary application areas include immersive technologies and decision support systems.
Thematic area #3: Digital design for education
Educational research that addresses digitalization spans over many areas, and with various theoretical and methodological lenses. For example, educational research has impacted national policymaking, with national strategies and national curricula, along with juridical guidelines. Educational research has also contributed with insights for curriculum and classroom interaction design, as well as educational software, digital contents, and learning analytics. Moreover, educational research has provided updated insights on professional digital competences for teachers and school leaders, along with digital competences for students. Digital citizenship makes another important area that has been studied from various angles within the field of educational research.
In contrast, the research in Information Systems tends to focus on specific system classes, such as conversational agents, social robots, and generative artificial intelligence. Our ambition is to combine both perspectives to arrive at meaningful and hands-on recommendations for the design of digital technology in the context of education—from primary education to higher education.
Thematic area #4: Digital design for humanistic pursuits
Information Systems research traditionally focused on supporting work activities: automation, business analytics, enterprise system architecture, legacy system, and many others. On the other hand, we can observe a strong research tradition on hedonic use, gamification, and digital experience. Our last thematic area explores the underexplored domains of digital design: how can digital technology be designed for humanistic pursuits, that is, not for work-related and other pragmatic goals? Examples of humanistic pursuits are artistic creation, play, sport, cultural exploration, and culinary appreciation.
Keeping up with the CHERISHers
Selected publications
Lorenz, J., Chandra Kruse, L., & Recker, J. (Forthcoming). Creating and Capturing Value with Physical-Digital Experiential Consumer Offerings. Journal of Management Information Systems. (FT50)
Molla, A., Chandra Kruse, L., Karanasios, S., Cheong, C., & Hoang, G. (2024). Designing Information Systems for Infectious Disease Management under VUCA Situation: Insights from a Design Archaeology Analysis of COVIDSafe. Journal of the Association for Information Systems. (ABS 4*)
Schoormann, T., Möller, F., Chandra Kruse, L., & Otto, B. (2024). BAUSTEIN – A Design Tool for Configuring and Representing Design Research. Information Systems Journal. (ABS 4)
Wass, S., Thygesen, E., & Purao, S. (2023). Principles to Facilitate Social Inclusion for Design-Oriented Research. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 24(5), 1204-1247. (ABS 4*)
Chandra Kruse, L., Bergener, K., Conboy, K., Lundström, J. E., Maedche, A., Sarker, S., Seeber, I., Stein, A., & Tømte, C. E. (2023). Understanding the Digital Companions of Our Future Generation. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 52, 465-479. (ABDC A)
Chandra Kruse, L., & Drechsler, K. (2022). Digitalization of Multisensory Collective Activities: The Case of Virtual Wine Tasting. Journal of Information Technology, 37(4), 341-358. (ABS 4)
Chandra Kruse, L., Purao, S., & Seidel, S. (2022). How Designers Use Design Principles: Design Behaviors and Application Modes. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 23(5), 1235-1270. (ABS 4*)
Gregor, S., Chandra Kruse, L., & Seidel, S. (2020). Research Perspective: The Anatomy of a Design Principle. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 21(6), 1622-1652. (ABS 4*)
Seidel, S., Chandra Kruse, L., Székely, N., Gau, M., & Stieger, D. (2018). Design Principles for Sensemaking Support Systems in Environmental Sustainability Transformations. European Journal of Information Systems, 27(2), 221-247. (ABS 4)