Sophia Sakel

E-Mail	sophia.sakel ät ifi.lmu.de
Phone	+49 89 2180-75130	Please contact me via E-Mail.
Address	Sophia Sakel LMU Munich Media Informatics Group Frauenlobstr. 7a 80337 Munich, Germany
Room	431 (4th floor)

Research Interests

Social well-being is an important factor for mental health. My research focuses on how technology shapes our social connections, both online and offline. My work explores how digital traces of our interactions impact relationships, offering new opportunities for connection while presenting unique challenges. I aim to understand how technology influences the depth and quality of our social ties in an increasingly connected world, including potential solutions and applications in a therapeutic context.

Research Projects

PhoneStudy

The PhoneStudy project is an interdisciplinary Mobile Sensing research project, by the chair of Psychological Methods and Assessment, Media Informatics, and Computational Statistics. Its integral part is the PhoneStudy research app, that assesses behavioral and contextual data of study participants in the wild. The data is then used to investigate the relationships between people's behavior, well-being, personality and emotions. I joined the team in September 2021 where I am now head of the development team. I coordinate the development and maintenance of the PhoneStudy app and supervise student assistants.

Coping with Corona

The Coping with Corona study, or short CoCo, is a joint research project of the WWU Münster, University of Osnabrück and LMU Munich that deals with the investigation of various social and psychological contexts during the Corona pandemic. We are interested in the extent to which smartphone data can be used to infer relationships between social interaction, personality, mood, and well-being, etc.

Theses

Open

master thesis

Investigating the impact of short-form video interruptions and device use on conversation quality and social bonding

In Progress

2025
Katharina Schrecker	bachelor thesis	Exploring User Preferences for Social Relationship Management
Zahra Saremi	master thesis	Designing Technology to Strengthen Couple Relationships
Annika Voss	master thesis	Investigating Effects of Spontaneous Social Networks on Social Wellbeing

Finished

2024
Isabel Wanderwitz	master thesis	Interventions to Mitigate the Negative Effects of Phubbing and Foster Meaningful Social Interactions
Magdalena Benkard	master thesis	Self-Managing Mental Health through a Contextual Mood-Tracking application
2023
Sina Schnebelt	master thesis	Developing a Tangible Platform for Psychological Wellbeing
Anna Putz	bachelor thesis	Physical Representation of and Interaction with Biomarkers
Tabea Blenk	master thesis	Investigating Technology to Support and Reflect on Social Interactions
Tim Olbrich	master thesis	Concept, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Mood-Tracking Application Using Mobile Sensing for Context Detection to Improve Users' Well-Being
Flavia Criscione	bachelor thesis	TraCally: Integrating Self-Tracking into a Mobile Calendar to Support Well-Being
2022
Joana Braja	master thesis	Designing a Post Therapy Guide to Support Depressive Patients Over Time
Michelle Zender	BA/MA	Interacting with your Thoughts / VR Application for a Gamified Intervention for Psychological Disorders
Lea Sigethy	PA/BA	Entwicklung und Evaluation einer mobilen App zur Studienorientierung im Fach Informatik

Teaching Assistance

Winter term 2024/2025: Human-Computer Interaction 2, Hauptseminar Media Informatics
Summer term 2024: Conversational Artificial Intelligence, User Experience Design 3, Hauptseminar Media Informatics
Winter term 2023/2024: Human-Computer Interaction 2, Practical Course Intelligent Interactive Systems, Hauptseminar Media Informatics
Summer term 2023: Proseminar Media Informatics (Teaching assistant)
Summer term 2022: Proseminar Media Informatics (Teaching assistant)
Winter term 2021/2022: Proseminar Media Informatics (Teaching assistant)

Publications

2025
Download	Sophia Sakel, Nađa Terzimehić Understanding Simultaneous Technology Use in Collocated One-on-One Social Interactions CHI EA '25, April 26-May 1, 2025, Yokohama, Japan (bib)
2024
Download	Sophia Sakel, Tabea Blenk, Albrecht Schmidt, Luke Haliburton The Social Journal: Investigating Technology to Support and Reflect on Meaningful Social Interactions In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24). ACM. New York, NY, USA. 2024. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642411 (bib)
Download	Sophia Sakel, Sven Mayer Exploring Opportunities for Data-Driven Wellbeing Support through Positive Reinforcements Workshop on Designing (with) AI for Wellbeing @ Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI `24), May 11-16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA (bib)
Download	Sophia Sakel, Thomas Reiter, Julian Scharbert, Julian ter Horst, Mitja Back, Maarten van Zalk, Markus Bühner, Ramona Schödel Investigating Phubbing in Everyday Life: Challenges and Lessons for Future Research CHI EA `24, May 11-16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA (bib)
2023
Download	Sophia Sakel, Florian Bemmann, Sven Mayer Exploring Data-Driven Approaches to Support Depression Therapy Workshop on Intelligent Data-Driven Health Interfaces @ Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'23), April 23-28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany (bib)
Download	Sarah Aragon-Hahner, Sophia Sakel, Sven Strickroth "Is Computer Science the Right Study Program for Me?": Concept Development of a Mobile Self-Reflection App for Prospective University Students 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2023), April 21-23, 2023, Prague, Czech Republic (bib)
2022
Download	Heiko Drewes, Sophia Sakel, Heinrich Hussmann User Perception of Smooth Pursuit Target Speed 2022 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (bib)