Viktoria Pammer-Schindler
I am an associate professor in HCI and EdTech at Graz University of Technology and Deputy Head of the Institute of Human-Centred Computing. I am also a research area manager at the Know-Center.
Research - Teaching - CV - Contact
Teaching
Ongoing Lectures:
I teach the following lectures:
- Artificial Intelligence 1: Winter term
- Introduction to Computational Social Systems (one module, and supervision of selected team projects in this course): Winter term
- Conversational Systems: Winter term
- Designing Interactive Systems: Summer term - shortlisted for the excellent teaching award at TU Graz in 2018 and 2020
Intro to Scientific Working, Bachelor projects and theses, seminars, projects and master theses - Learning how to do Design-Oriented Research in HCI and EdTech
- HCI = Human-Computer Interaction
- EdTech = Educational Technology
I research the theory-led design of interactive and intelligent systems from a socio-technical and learning perspective.
- Theory-led: The interactive and intelligent (based on data analytics, and methods from AI) technologies we design use existing theories and knowledge about how to design technologies, how people work and learn effectively.
- Interactive and intelligent systems: Systems are interactive, and based on data analytics and methods from AI, such as classification, clustering, generative AI.
- Socio-technical perspective: I do user-centred/human-centred design, and think not only about a single user, but about the social system (family, organisation, society) around the user.
- Learning perspective: I focus on task performance (what users want to do NOW) as well as long-term (competence) development (“does AI make us more stupid?”)
Subsequently, when you study with me (see list below) you learn:
- how to use theories and knowledge about
- the design of interactive systems
- interactions of technology, human and complex (socio-technical) environments
- human cognition and behaviour
- empirical methods from HCI, with a focus on mixed methods for data analysis
- to design and evaluate technologies, and think of them in the context of our lives.
You can study with me in the following courses, or in a master thesis:
- Introduction to Scientific Working
- Bachelor theses and projects
- Seminar/Project
- Seminar
- Research Seminar (for Digital Societies Major in the CSS master): Winter term, offered at the University of Graz (not TU Graz, but in collaboration) - This course is specific to the named major and does not fall into the below systematic. It is best described as a "trial master thesis".
Please read the following Concept for Teaching How to Do Design-Oriented HCI and EdTech Research for understanding what you will do and learn in each of these lectures, and what you will do in a master thesis:
A very rough and first differentation is that in introduction to scientific working you will read up on existing literature, a bachelor thesis and master project means software implementation based on theory-led design principles and rationale and coherent documentation with different levels of theory grounding, implementation and documentation quality expected; a seminar/project means carrying out empirical research; and a master thesis means carrying out a full research project including literature review, software prototype implementation, a user study, and of course coherent communication of research work in a written masters' thesis and oral presentation.
Open Research Topics for Students
If you are interested in doing introduction to scientific working, a bachelor thesis, master project, seminar, or master thesis with me, please contact me via email.
Before this, please read about my research interests.
For introduction to scientific working, bachelor projects or theses, and seminars or projects, please also read my concept for learning how to do research (above), and register to the course in TUGraz Online.
I am currently looking for students in the following topics.
For most topics, we have interesting international collaborations should you be interested in combining your master thesis with a stay abroad.
For most topics, the work can be scoped and adjusted to bachelor thesis, seminar/project, master project, or master thesis level (see above).
Ongoing Theses:
PhD
- Alina Kopkow - Interaction paradigms for LLM-based chatbots
- Mia Bangerl - Designing for long-term human learning in video-based and AI-supported collaboration
- Leonie Disch. Designing AI-based technology to support knowledge construction in complex professional contexts, such as open science or data analytics.
Master
- Haris Hadzimahmutovic - Asking questions about a student-facing learning dashboard to an LLM-based chatbot.
- Abdelrahman Ramadan - Voice-based interaction about key concepts in a text.
- Vanessa Komar - GenAI-based proactive technology as partner in creativity
- Elias Doppelreiter - Computer-supported translation in online collaboration.
- Katharina Stefan - Multi-dimensional differences between face-2-face and video-based collaboration.
Closed Theses:
PhD
- Michael Fruhwirth, 2024. Designing Support for Data-Driven Business Model Innovation in Offline-Established Organizations
- Behzad Mirzababaei, 2024. Developing Full Tutorial Conversational Agents for Argumentation as a Learning Activity (full thesis)
- Carla Barreiros, 2020. A Nature-Inspired Tree Visual Language to Achieve a Positive Human Interaction in the Internet of Things Paradigm (co-supervision with Eduardo Veas, (full thesis)
- Angela Fessl, 2017. In-App Reflection Guidance for Workplace Learning (co-supervision with Stefanie Lindstaedt, short version published in IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies)
Master
- Tamara David,2025 - Generative AI supported human-2-human (creative) collaboration. The master thesis was extended to the A* ACM CHI publication Bangerl et al. 2025 - CreAItive Collaboration
- Alina Kopkow, 2024 - A genAI-based tutorial chatbot for discussing green entrepreneurship business cases
- Sebastian Überreiter, 2024 - Knowledge construction in virtual reality. The master thesis was extended to a paper at the ACM Mensch und Computer 2024: Beyond Textbooks: A Study on Supporting Learning of Molecule Naming in a Virtual Reality Environment
- Nikita Lvov, 2023. Forest representations of shared knowledge bases
- Ilja Simic, 2022. A Conversational Agent for Discussing the News Quality of Articles.
- Amel Hamidovic, 2021. Reflection analytics for conversational agents in apprenticeship training
- Patrick Steyer, 2020. Rebo - A feasibility study on moving from a static dialogue structure for reflection for apprentices to a conversational agent
- Andreas Wöls, 2020 - Chatbot-based reflection prompts and actiivty log data for time management
- Armin Köfler, 2017 - Verbesserung des Lagebewusstseins und der Maßnahmenergreifung bei der Sicherung von Grossveranstaltungen (Extended abstract at i-Know 2017 Workshop on Data-Driven Decision Support in Digitized Work Environments, journal paper accepted at deGruyter information technology)
- Sabine Lukas, 2017 - Prozessoptimierung auf Basis eines Multi-Level Management Systems für Waldbrandszenarien (Paper at i-Know 2017 Workshop on Data-Driven Decision Support in Digitized Work Environments)
- Dominik Widnig, 2017 - Geo Heroes - a location based mixed reality game (Youtube Video of the game)
- Andreas Müller, 2017 - Learning in online communities in the case of StarCraft
- Christofer Öjeling, 2016 - Physical Sokoban. An augmented reality game. A paper was presented at ISMAR. The thesis was supervised by myself at the Know-Center, while the thesis was formally supervised at Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg, examined by Graham Kemo and supervised by K.V.S. Prasad.
- Markus Perndorfer, 2015 - Detecting social interactions via mobile sensing [pdf in TUGOnline]. Download the (anonymised) mobile phone sensing data that Markus collected as part of his master thesis [dataset].
- Martin Daum, 2015 - Locating lost items using pedestrian dead reckoning on smartphones [pdf in TUGOnline].
- Alfred Wertner, 2014 - Stress Prediction for Knowledge Workers based on PC Activity and Noise Level
Selected bachelor theses
In the past, I also held the following lectures:
- Introduction to Knowledge Technologies: Summer terms 2018, 2019
- Sensors and User Models: 2015, 2016
- Semantic Technologies, TU Graz, winter terms 2012/2013, 2013/2014 - together with Wolfgang Kienreich.