The Department of Informatics at Lund University strives to be recognized as a leading informatics research centre in Europe. Research in informatics in Lund is multi-disciplinary in its approach and has a strong international focus in terms of research issues and general involvement. The research in the department is primarily organized in three research areas:

The information systems and organizations group focuses on opportunities, problems, and solutions at the intersection of information and communication technologies (ICT), information systems (IS), management and organizations, and, especially, on how IS/ICT can enable, enhance, and transform critical intra- and inter-organizational processes. Research is done in cooperation with large corporations such as Vattenfall, SCA, and Trelleborg. The research straddles “traditional science” and design science and is focused on three themes:

• Impact studies deal with the impact of ICT and IS, for example, the impact of Enterprise Systems on organizational processes and tasks.

• Studies of the development, deployment and use of ICT and IS are, for example, concerned with how to improve software development processes and how to improve the deployment of Enterprise Systems.

• Studies of the organization, governance, and management of ICT and IS resources deal with, for example, IT governance in multi-national companies.

The systems construction group works on issues in the construction of software systems, primarily for business and administration. Research is done on the relationship between business objectives and software systems and on how the latter can be designed so as to ensure various quality attributes. Particular attention is given to these research issues:

1. The design and assessment of “logical infrastructures” and the evaluation of their effects on business objectives, artefact qualities, and the organization of software development, where the concept of “logical infrastructures” refers to such fields and notions as, for example:
   

   
   - component-oriented programme and systems development
   - business rules management systems (BRMS)
   - design and architectural patterns
   - software architecture

2. The impact of the software developer’s competence, values, worldview, and practice on software products and their quality
3. The impact of inventors’ and researchers’ competence, values, worldview, and practice in the innovative process as regards new software development methods and approaches, computing and programming paradigms, programming languages, software products, etc.

The human-computer interaction design group is focused on issues related to the digital environment that today is to be found everywhere. Almost all modern everyday things - from mobile phones, cameras, central heating controllers, calculators to wristwatches and airplanes - work because of embedded computers. This world of embedded computing is now getting networked through information and communication technologies (ICT) and new integrated applications emerge everywhere. Hence, everyday computing requires new methods and a new understanding of technology and ICT.

A central issue here is interaction design which deals with how a user communicates, or interacts, with a digital system. The Scandinavian multi-disciplinary approach to interaction design is based on a public dialogue with active participation of end-users and is focused on people, societal values, ICT functionality, and aesthetics. The research group advocates user-centred design practice, participating in interdisciplinary projects and testing innovative interaction models by building and testing prototypes. The primary research areas worked in are:

1. Everyday computing:
   

   
   - studies of the use of interactive systems and of the interaction between the artefact, the user, and the environment, and of how to define the form and interaction of the artefact based on usage, usefulness and real users' needs
   - how consumers think of and adopt new interactive systems and how this impacts the development of services and products.

2. Interaction design:
   

   
   - how to design with multidisciplinary integrating skills and how such design could merge with and bring interactive ICT forward
   - developing a genuine knowledge base in interaction technologies, i.e. both learning and applying new technologies to build innovative and functional prototypes. Current research projects deal with mobile computing, ICT and learning, audio and image-based interaction, public e-services for healthcare, and game environments.