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Electronic Markets accepted the paper “Biosignal-Adaptive Platforms” co-authored by Mario Nadj, Alexander Maedche, Rene Riedl, Julia Seitz, and Tanja Schulz as a Fundamentals contribution for publication. Personalization is a well-established concept that leverages a wide range of user data to tailor digital platforms to target audiences. Advances in sensor technologies now allow continuous recording of human activities. The resulting biosignals can be processed and interpreted in real time enabling closed-loop adaptation and deeper individualized personalization.

As part of Girls' Day 2026, doctoral students from the human-centered systems lab offered a workshop for schoolgirls. In the workshop, they learned how to recognize human emotions using biosignals capturing human activity such as heart or gaze activity on the basis of sensor technologies. Following a human-centered design process, the schoolgirls worked together in teams to explore the context of use, articulate user  needs and requirements, create a prototypical emotion-adaptive app and evaluate it with users.

From March 23 to March 25, the biannual gathering of KD2School took place at Haus der Kirche in Bad Herrenalb. Participants not only learned about the progress of the DFG-funded and associated young researchers through a new presentation format, but also had the opportunity to connect with the Mercator Fellows Prof. Max L. Wilson and Prof. Julia Nafziger. In addition, they gained valuable insights into contemporary flow research through a keynote given by Prof. Corinna Peifer.

The research work of members of the KD2School is represented by 6 full papers and 2 posters at the ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the leading international conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).  CHI 2026 will take place in Barcelona from April 13th to 17th, 2026. These papers and posters highlight the cutting edge of biosignal-adaptive systems, leveraging biosignal data captured by EEG and eye-tracking devices  to monitor psychological states such as fatigue, flow, and attention. Many of the presented studies explore how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be integrated into biosignal-adaptive systems for delivering personalized experiences..

On February 10, 2026, students participating in the M.Sc. lecture Engineering Interactive Systems: AI & Wearables offered by Dr. Martin Feick and Dr. Felix Kretzer from the human-centered systems lab presented the results of their capstone projects projects in the KD2Lab. The capstone project was carried out in cooperation with Visualvest GmbH, a fintech subsidiary of the Union Investment Group. Students leveraged Polar H10 wearable chest strep to capture heart activity in the form of heart rate variability features, analyze and recognize stress levels and on this basis design an biosignal-adaptive investment banking app prototype extending the existing Visualvest mobile app.

The DFG Research Training Group (RTG) KD²School will receive funding for another five years.  In this RTG, KIT is collaborating with the Universities of Bremen and of Oldenburg to research the design of biosignal-adaptive systems for decision-making processes in economic contexts as well as in private and professional life. The RTG’s spokespersonship is anchored at the Institute for Information Systems (WIN), with Prof. Dr. Christof Weinhardt leading the first funding period and Prof. Dr. Alexander Mädche assuming responsibility for the second. In the second period, a stronger focus will be placed on the design of biosignal-adaptive systems.