The Information Systems (IS) Group includes three interrelated long-standing research strands: reflection on philosophical, sociological, and historical foundations of IS research in engineering and technology; projective research methods for participatory, socially complex, uncertain and non-deterministic sociotecnical realities; and the design and study of new media and connected contexts for learning, stimulation, social and organisational governance, etc.

IS Development research focus on sociotechnical aspects of Information Systems. It ranges from development methodologies for IS, the study of synergies between IS, Governance, Quality Management, Organisational Engineering and Industry 4.0. This line of work aims to support organisations in the digital transformation process, towards the adoption of Industry 4.0 and other systems and services governance contexts.

This aims to contribute with new approaches to organisational development, including diagnosis as well as prescriptive models for improving processes and services. This includes issues such as conformity with regulations, modelling critical systems, supply-chain management, data quality, service life-cycle, modeling and managing semantic interoperability, blockchain, etc.

Our Participatory Media Design research aims to study Interaction Design methodologies, and the exploitation of interactive computational media under a sociotechnical perspective. Mainly exploring Design Research approaches with new interactive technologies, we study socio-technical transitions in fundamental Human phenomena of work, play and learning, seeking usability/UX qualities to enable new forms of creativity, innovative computational media formats and new forms of collaboration.

Current research includes ux/interaction design and AR/VR interface technologies in health&wellbeing, BMI in physical and neuro-rehabilitation; sound design in games and data sonification; game design techniques and player experience evaluation; serious games explorations in public health, training, environmental protection, etc; gamification, knowledge bases; malleable computer supported collaborations, end-user development and procedural content generation.