Software engineering and information systems
Our scientific aim is to advance the theories, methods, and evidence base needed to understand and engineer complex socio-technical systems. Our societal aim follows from this: to support a digital transformation that is responsible and sustainable, to make software and information systems more inclusive and trustworthy, and to help ensure that the systems we live with serve the people who use them.
What we work on
Three connected questions guide our research:
- How are software and information systems built, and how can we build them better?
- How should software and information systems be designed for and with the people who depend on them?
- How do software and information systems shape behaviour, services, and value?
Pursuing these questions, our work spans empirical software engineering across the software development lifecycle (from requirements to maintenance), the engineering of cyber-physical and software-defined systems, AI in software engineering, human-centred and participatory design, human-computer interaction, usability and user experience, persuasive systems design, digital services and service design, games and gamification, and the agency, ethics, participation, and empowerment that complex socio-technical systems raise.
We study these threads together because each strengthens the others: software is more dependable when it is designed with its users in mind, services succeed when they engage real people, and designs become real when they can be implemented and sustained at scale.
SEIS is built on the conviction that engineering, design, and use have to be studied together.
How we work
Our research is empirical, combining quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods: interviews, observations, surveys, controlled experiments, case studies, software repository data, and digital trace data. Constructive and design-oriented work is central in several streams, where we build artefacts, services, and interaction concepts, and study what happens when they meet real users, organisations, and infrastructures.
We collaborate closely with industry, the public sector, and other societal partners, and we participate in competitive national and international research programmes. Our work is supported by usability and user experience laboratories, software engineering toolchains, and digital platforms.
Together, these methods, partnerships, and infrastructures keep our research engaged with the realities of how software and information systems are built and used.
Research groups