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Torkil Clem­mensen

Professor

Subjects
Design User experience Geopolitics Hybrid work Methodology Culture Psychology

Primary research areas

Cul­tur­al us­ab­il­ity
I study us­ab­il­ity as the fit between new designs and loc­al cul­tur­al mod­els of prac­tice. My re­search re­quires geo­pol­it­ic­al aware­ness to un­der­stand how di­git­al tools, in­clud­ing AI and data­sets, can be anchored, owned, and ap­plied by loc­al so­ci­et­ies, com­munit­ies, and busi­nesses.
Re­la­tion arte­fact design
Re­la­tion arte­fact design is my take on hu­man-work-in­ter­ac­tion-design, link­ing hu­man work with nov­el di­git­al in­ter­ac­tion. It’s a way to do “psy­cho­logy-as-a-sci­ence-of-design,” de­vel­op­ing so­cio-tech­nic­al the­or­ies so de­sign­ers em­brace both tech­nic­al and so­cial per­spect­ives, see­ing out­comes like AI-sys­tems as arte­facts sup­port­ing hu­man re­la­tions.
Pro­fes­sion­al know­ledge
This is about design­ing com­puter sup­port for di­verse pro­fes­sion­al know­ledge - med­ic­al doc­tors, en­gin­eers, UX spe­cial­ists, train drivers, nav­ig­at­ors, psy­cho­lo­gists, and more. It also stud­ies aca­dem­ic re­search­ers’ know­ledge, draw­ing on ex­pert­ise re­search, crit­ic­al psy­cho­logy, and emer­ging metas­cience.

I use psy­cho­logy to guide know­ledge-based cre­ation of sus­tain­able so­cio-tech­nic­al fu­tures

I am a human factors psychologist turned into a business school professor with a durable and influential research profile in human-computer interaction and digitalization 
 

My research helps:  

- Drive an ethical and human-centered vision for interactive system development    

- Offer tools that foreground user meaning-making in technologically mediated environments   

- Address critical challenges in digitalization, cultural usability, and the design of smart workplaces, by bringing together social science, arts, and humanities scholars with engineers and computer scientists to foster cross-sectoral innovation   

- Emphasize the fusion of design thinking, psychology, and business strategy to produce graduates equipped to lead responsible digital transformation in both academic and professional contexts   

- Advance a vision in which psychology guides the creation of sustainable post-humane socio-technical futures  

- Develop scholarship on geopolitical tensions in HCI and culturally grounded design thinking that informs global debates on digital ethics, user autonomy, and the localization of interaction design  

Publications

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6 March 2026

Exploring Service Robots as Resources for Occupational Well-Being at Hospitals in Denmark and South Korea

Laura Moll Meldgård

John Allan Øllgaard

Oskar Palinko

Me Yeon Lee

Tor­kil Clem­men­sen, Professor

Go to publication

March 2026

ARRPID 2025

Crossing the Academia-Practice Divide in Interaction Design

José Abdelnour-Nocera

Marta Rey Barbarro

Teresa Macchia

Tor­kil Clem­men­sen, Professor

Go to publication

2026

Transparent Autonomy and Human Work Interaction Design

Elodie Bouzekri

Tor­kil Clem­men­sen, Professor

Antony William Joseph

Arminda Guerra Lopes

Adriana Moreno Rangel

José Abdelnour-Nocera
Go to publication

Recent research projects

Dan­ish DIR­EC pro­ject: Se­cure In­ter­net of things (SIOT) - Risk Ana­lys­is in Design and Op­er­a­tion, (2022-2025), Budget: DKK 25,10 mil­lion, CBS part: one PhD fel­low.

This pro­ject de­vel­ops meth­ods and tools for se­cure IoT sys­tems, us­ing at­tack-de­fense mod­els, risk ana­lys­is, and us­ab­il­ity stud­ies to bal­ance se­cur­ity, per­form­ance, and cost in crit­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions.
https://direc.dk/siot-secure-internet-of-things-risk-analysis-in-design-and-operation/

European Psy­cho­logy of HCI (2024 – on­go­ing)

This re­search pro­ject fo­cus on shed­ding light on European Psy­cho­logy of HCI , in­clud­ing what the European or loc­al ground­ing of HCI re­search may mean, and what the ‘psy­cho­logy of HCI’ may mean.
Article relevant to the project

AI-PRO­C­ARE (2026–2028)

Pro­cure­ment of AI Sys­tems for Sus­tain­able Health­care Work En­vir­on­ments

AI-PRO­C­ARE is a Nor­d­ic re­search pro­ject that in­vest­ig­ates how the pro­cure­ment of AI sys­tems can sup­port sus­tain­able work en­vir­on­ments in pub­lic health­care. The pro­ject re­frames pro­cure­ment as a so­ci­o­tech­nic­al in­ter­ven­tion with sig­ni­fic­ant im­plic­a­tions for em­ploy­ees, or­gan­isa­tion­al prac­tices, and pa­tient care.

Through em­pir­ic­al case stud­ies across the Nor­d­ic coun­tries, the pro­ject de­vel­ops and eval­u­ates na­tion­al and Nor­d­ic guidelines for re­spons­ible AI pro­cure­ment. It com­bines re­search in HCI, di­git­al health, pub­lic sec­tor in­nov­a­tion, and work en­vir­on­ment stud­ies, and pro­duces peer-re­viewed Open Ac­cess pub­lic­a­tions along­side prac­tice-ori­ented out­puts.

AI-PRO­C­ARE en­gages pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als, health­care lead­ers, oc­cu­pa­tion­al health ex­perts, and policy act­ors through co-design pro­cesses, ref­er­ence groups, and Nor­d­ic col­lab­or­a­tion. The pro­ject cul­min­ates in pub­licly avail­able guidelines and a last­ing di­git­al re­source to sup­port fu­ture AI pro­cure­ment prac­tices in health­care.
AI-PROCARE

Outside activities