Kian Schmalenbach

In my PhD, I am investigating the societal implications of the use of personalized data-driven systems. Specifically, I analyze what potential risks arise from the use of personalized systems in domains such as social media or e-commerce when their behavior is based on the processing of historically created or machine-generated data. Based on this, I develop strategies and design principles to mitigate such risks and ensure that the behavior of such systems matches the intended functionality. To this end, I combine prototype development with empirical research methods to identify the potential risks and empirically evaluate the functionality of the prototypes.