The 'Purposeful Technology Lab' (PTL) research group develops theories, methods and tools for the design, evaluation, implementation of complex ICT systems to support interaction, sustainability, value creation and collaboration in organisations and society. This includes research in interaction design, user experience design, digital learning design, knowledge organisation and information architecture – and is based on participatory approaches such as user-centred design as well as data-driven problem-solving approaches. 

A cornerstone is understanding user practice and information behaviour through various lenses: practice studies (incl. use and adaptation of ICT systems), information and data literacy, data analysis and visualisation for the intelligent access, prediction, analytics and ethics of information in the face of large amounts of data. 

These are applied to a wide range of areas, including recommender systems, interactive information retrieval systems, HR technology, EdTech, Open data, Citizen science, Computational SSH, Human-centred and responsible AI as well as IT security.