Martina Ziefle originally is a psychologist and manages the Professorship for Communication Science at the Institute for Linguistics and Communication Science. She is founding director of the Human-Computer Interaction Center at RWTH Aachen since 2011.
The professorship covers an interdisciplinary group of scientists doing research on the systematic integration of „human factors“ in technical contexts as well as user-centered interaction and communication between humans and technology. Research on acceptability of technology focusses on perception, description, quantifying and modeling of group specific acceptability of technology, depending on the context of use and different technolgy types. Their special interest are socially most relevant technologies and fields of application, massively variing in their valuation and thus controversially discussed (e.g. mobile communication, information and communication technologies integrated in the homely environment), for which they create acceptance mappings. These mappings, basing on judgements of human perception, allow to balance similar pros and cons of different technologies and to simulate human decisions.
