The seminar will take place on Tuesday, November 18th, from 12:00 to 13:00 (HG-14A37). You can find more information below.
This is a lunch seminar; please register your attendance by accepting/declining your emailed invitation by Monday, November 17th, at 10 AM at the latest (for catering).
Abstract
As AI systems increasingly participate in decision-making and customer interaction, organizations face a critical challenge: how can we design human–AI collaboration that is trustworthy, meaningful, and effective? Information systems research and particularly design science has made major contributions by creating innovative, context-specific digital systems. Yet our field still struggles to accumulate this knowledge into generalizable and reusable design theory.
In this talk, I present abductive design theorizing, a structured approach for synthesizing diverse design knowledge into coherent, actionable theory. This approach addresses one of the most pressing methodological challenges in design science research: moving from isolated artifact contributions toward integrated and scalable design knowledge.
To illustrate this, I will share insights from an ongoing research project at the Flow Factory, a joint innovation lab of the University of Münster (ERCIS) and the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe. In collaboration with multiple financial institutions, we aim to develop a unified design theory for trustworthy conversational agents across text, voice, and embodied modalities. The goal is to prepare AI systems to scale in a real-world financial ecosystem serving more than 50 million customers.