Interview with President Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann and Prof. Annette Diefenthaler
"Making innovations trustworthy and socially acceptable"
We are living in an era of complex technological, ecological and social challenges. How does the university respond to this, Professor Hofmann?
Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann: The current situation in the USA illustrates what can happen when elite universities become too disconnected from society at large. I am convinced that, in the future, universities will have to increasingly align their academic ambitions with the needs of society. Universities that are only concerned with themselves will hardly be able to fulfill their social mandate. In other words, only those universities that address people's expectations, questions, and concerns during the innovation process will develop the creative output that is expected of them.
This requires a holistic rethinking, shifting the focus from technology to society: "Society-Centered Research & Innovation." This means we are increasingly focusing on innovations that are responsible, trustworthy, and socially acceptable. To achieve this, we combine disciplinary competencies, apply design intelligence, and develop new solutions to complex challenges that cannot be addressed in siloed thought processes.
The Munich Design Institute (MDI) is a central measure at TUM for achieving this goal. What added value do approaches from design research offer?
Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann: The Munich Design Institute is at the heart of this shift. As an Integrative Research Institute, it creates connections across schools to tap into transdisciplinary innovation potential. It integrates an understanding of behavioral science, manufacturing techniques, product development, technical design, rapid prototyping, and more to develop the creative abilities of students, researchers, and aspiring entrepreneurs. It also creates new, valuable effects on the design of technologies, products, software, processes, and change trajectories.
Prof. Annette Diefenthaler: Design as a discipline actively shapes interdisciplinary collaboration - with a broad variety of methods and collaborative processes. At the MDI, we bring together designers, industry partners, citizens and researchers to co-create solutions for pressing challenges we face. We use design to create a shared understanding of complex topics for people of different educational levels, cultural or socio-economic backgrounds and of all ages. This is particularly important given the rapid development of technology which can lead to fear and anxiety, leading people to look backwards rather than forward.
With creative imagination, we can design vivid, tangible future scenarios. We call this future literacy: the ability to develop multiple options for our future and make decisions based on that. This enables a variety of people to participate in the design process. The sense of agency and self-efficacy creates hope that a livable future is possible.
What is design?
Design, in short, is the craft of imagining, exploring, and implementing a livable future: Designers use iterative processes to create a space where visionary ideas can emerge, and translate them into strategic, actionable solutions. The interdisciplinary approach builds shared understanding through prototyping and visualization.
Historically rooted in form and function, the discipline has evolved to shape complex systems, experiences, organizations, and even public policy.
How is the development of new technologies affected by this?
Prof. Annette Diefenthaler: Any society is made up of very different people with very different value systems, involving these diverging perspectives in the design process is not easy. We plan to do so in three ways:
One is co-designing the research question itself. Currently, researchers are defining which questions matter and should be investigated further. But what does society care about? The first step is to build mechanisms that bring research questions into the university. The second step is actively involving people from society in the ongoing research and design process. The third step is translating scientific insight and knowledge into relevant, practical solutions.
Throughout, there is the question: is this a problem worth solving at all? This criticality is a mindset and an attitude and it requires the courage to possibly take a detour in your process.
In what ways does this field interact with other research disciplines?
Prof. Annette Diefenthaler: Design has always evolved through collaboration with and inspiration from other disciplines. At TUM, we have a special opportunity to advance our own discipline — in terms of methods and content — by collaborating with other fields of research.
Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann: For example, the MDI will support the development of the new Cluster of Excellence TransforM. In this cluster, social science issues and societal implications will be considered in the innovation process from the beginning to find solutions that go beyond just technical and scientific results. Using such integrative design approaches can help us to avoid developing technologies that are not sustainable, societally relevant, or marketable. For this reason, we expect the MDI to be an exciting addition for start-ups in particular.
Design processes also play an important role in the further development of artificial intelligence. How can new AI developments meet social, regulatory and ethical requirements - and thus benefit society as a whole? We are working on such questions at the Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Reliable AI (relAI) and the Center for Responsible AI Technologies, among others. At the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology (SOT) and the TUM Center for Educational Technologies, we are investigating how AI will affect the way we will conduct research and impart knowledge in the future, as well as how we can use AI sensibly.
A further step in this direction is the new Master's degree program "AI in Society". In addition to technical skills, students acquire a deep social understanding and learn to drive responsible AI innovations, steer their complex regulations in the right direction and thus promote technologies for a better future.
Munich Center for Transformative Technologies and Social Change
TransforM Cluster of Excellence
Developments such as robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving can fundamentally change social, economic and cultural structures. From the very beginning, researchers at the social science Cluster of Excellence TransforM have been investigating how new technologies affect society and how the transformative potential of new technologies can be leveraged. The aim is to rethink theories and methods of participation, legitimacy, responsibility, security and resilience.
In which other areas do we already embody a society-centered attitude?
Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann: It is a fundamental way of thinking that we have begun integrating into research and teaching in various formats. For example, in the TUM: Junge Akademie and TUM Project Weeks, students learn to combine the skills, methods, and tools of different disciplines to develop valuable solutions to socially relevant issues outside of their lectures. Another example is the new TUM Public Science Lab - a participatory laboratory that explores the ways in which science and technology shape society, as well as how societal perspectives can influence research and innovation. Founded during the pandemic, the TUM Think Tank promotes dialogue between the scientific, business, political, and public sectors to develop concrete questions and transform knowledge into new action through cross-sector collaboration and critical debate.
We also take this approach to entrepreneurship. Students work in the THINK.MAKE.START format to develop solutions to real-world problems. They learn by acting and reflecting outside their comfort zones. They engage in iterative innovation processes to incorporate the needs of potential customers when developing new technologies, products, and services. Changing our perspective and facilitating an agile exchange of ideas across thought and sector boundaries opens up new solution spaces.
Prof. Annette Diefenthaler: We see the design of open conversation formats as an important part of the MDI offering. Recently, we introduced the "Creative Collisions" format, which brings together individuals from various fields of science, the industry, society, and design. My students designed these conversations to happen at eye level, with the purpose of generating inspiration and new ideas. We will continue to organize events like these. After all, if we can’t engage in conversation on a fundamental human level, we will never be able to make a difference within the society as a whole.
What role does the MDI play in the exchange with industry partners?
Prof. Annette Diefenthaler: We see ourselves as a front door for the industry. We value industry partners as a source of inspiration and technical expertise, as well as subjects of research. These partner organizations can approach us with questions, and we will then convene the right group of scientists to work on them.
Which projects are you currently working on at the MDI, and which ones are in the pipeline?
Prof. Annette Diefenthaler: We are currently laying the groundwork for our research activities by conducting preliminary experiments. We are deliberately exploring a wide range of topics and areas. In nutritional sciences, for instance, we intend to employ design approaches to improve the quality of research data. We plan to do so by redesigning the experience of study participants, in service of, for example, reducing dropout rates.
In the field of robotics, we are researching new design paradigms for the coexistence of humans and humanoid robots. While robots may currently be tolerated or even fascinating to people, they are not yet designed to fit into our living and working environments. There is significant potential here to influence technical progress. We are also working on a machine learning and data science project that aims to simplify participatory decision-making and design processes. Design often requires making many interrelated decisions simultaneously, and understanding how they relate to each other can be difficult. When people outside a core design team are asked to participate, we must clarify which design decisions lead to which consequences. We believe machine learning and digitally supported scenario modeling could be valuable tools in this space.
We also plan to collaborate with materials science and neurodesign, as well as in the field of politics. After all, democracy, the political process and its content are also designed.
What might the future hold for the university as a whole or its administration?
Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann: At TUM, Design will grow far beyond the process of simply shaping products and systems. It encompasses considering the requirements resulting from the intended use of technology, products, or systems to fulfill their purpose with regard to technical function, economic and ecological boundary conditions. This includes the use of materials, cost optimization, and reusability, as well as the interaction with human users in terms of usability and ergonomic aspects. The goal is to establish design as an integral and ongoing part of research, teaching, and innovation. Additionally, the aim is to generate novel, valuable effects in the design of technologies, products, software, and transformation processes across TUM's entire subject profile through collaborative thinking, creativity and system thinking.
Impressions of the "Creative Collisions" event
- The Munich Design Institute (MDI) is an Integrative Research Institute that brings together designers, researchers from various scientific fields, and people from industry and society. The MDI aims to use design research to develop sustainable solutions that are visionary, strategic, and practical.
- Prof. Annette Diefenthaler has been Professor of Design and Transdisciplinarity at the TUM School of Engineering and Design and Executive Director of the Munich Design Institute since 2023.
- President Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann
- The kick-off of the event series "Creative Collisions" took place on 05/16/2025.
- Clusters of Excellence of TUM
- Website of the Cluster of Excellence TransforM
Technical University of Munich
Corporate Communications Center
- Fiorina Schulz, Christina Fortwängler, Vera Spaett
- webcommunications@tum.de
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