On April 28th 2017, 30 SAP student interns visited the Experimental Research in Human Computer Interaction Project at the KD2Lab in Karlsruhe. The KD2-Lab is one of the biggest experimental laboratories in Europe to conduct experimental research. The event was hosted by our research group in close collaboration with SAP SE in Walldorf. Students were taught, how experimental research with users can help to enhance real-world information technologies and also can contribute to advancing information systems (IS) research.

Specifically, students learned about a ongoing research project aiming to investigate IT-mediated interruptions (e.g., notifications) in the context of work and its specific effects on an increasingly important concept called flow - defined as “the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement” (Csikszentmihalyi et al. 1975, p. 36). Hereby, the overall aim of the research project is to create flow-aware IS, able to “sense” individuals flow to decide, when and how to interrupt or notify individuals. This research is especially relevant in the context of intelligent, real-time enterprise systems (ES). The students were highly interested in our research on flow and IT-mediated interruptions as well as the new possibilities such investigations in combination with state-of-the-art experimental infrastructure (KD2-Lab) provides.