Informed Consent of Study Participation
You are invited to participate in the online study "User Needs and Ethics of Memory-Enhancing Systems". The study is conducted by Alexander Adams, Yannis Körner, Felix Chodykin, NaĂm RodrĂguez, and Eric Motisan and supervised by Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Jessica Sehrt from the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. The study with estimated 100 participants takes place in the period from 2026-01-10 to 2026-03-31.
Please note:
- Your participation is entirely voluntary and can be discontinued or withdrawn at any time.
- For the evaluation, we collect some personal information (e.g., age, gender, etc.), whereas contact data (e.g. e-mails) will only be used for feedback or further information about the study and not be passed on to any third parties.
- One session of the online study will last ca. 25Â minutes.
- You have no direct benefit from participating in the study, but you support our work and help to advance research in this area.
- During the session, we will log your input and manually record notes.
- Recordings and personal data are subject to the guidelines of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and will be pseudoanonymized (with a coded number), stored, evaluated, and potentially published so that without information from the researchers no conclusions can be drawn about individual persons.
- The alternative to participation in this study is to choose not to participate.
If you have any questions, concerns, or complaints about the informed consent process of this research study or your rights as a human research subject, please contact Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Jessica Sehrt. Please read the following information carefully and take the time you need.
1. Purpose and Goal of this Research
Everyday forgetfulness affects all age groups, from remembering future intentions and past information to forgetting due to inattention. Understanding needs and ethical aspects in order to design user-friendly memory enhancement systems.
Your participation will help us achieve this research goal. The results of this research may be presented at scientific or professional meetings or published in scientific proceedings and journals.
2. Study Participation
Your participation in this online study is entirely voluntary and can be discontinued or withdrawn at any time. You can refuse to answer any questions or continue with the study at any time if you feel uncomfortable in any way. You can discontinue or withdraw your participation at any time without giving a reason.
However, we reserve the right to exclude you from the study (e.g., with invalid trials or if continuing the study could have a negative impact on your well-being or the equipment). Repeated participation in the study is not permitted.
3. Study Procedure
After confirming this informed consent the procedure is as follows:
The confirmation of participation in this study can be obtained directly from the researchers.
4. Risks and Benefits
In the online study you will not be exposed to any immediate risk or danger. As with all computer systems on which data is processed, despite security measures, there is a small risk of data leakage and the loss of confidential or personal information. You have no direct benefit from participating in the study, but you support our work and help to advance research in this area.
5. Data Protection and Confidentiality
In this study, personal and subject-related data are collected for our research. The use of personal or subject-related information is governed by the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and will be treated in accordance with the GDPR. This means that you can view, correct, restrict processing, and delete the data collected in this study.
Only with your agreement, we will log your input and manually record notes in the study. We plan to publish the results of this and other research studies in academic articles or other media. Your data will not be retained for more than 2 years by the researchers or until you contact the researchers to have your data destroyed or deleted.
Access to the raw data, transcribed interviews, and observation protocols of the study is encrypted, password-protected and only accessible to the authors, colleagues and researchers collaborating on this research. Other members and administrators of our institution do not have access to your data. When publishing, the data will be anonymized using code numbers and published in aggregated form, so that without information from the researchers no conclusions can be drawn about individual persons.
Any interview content or direct quotations from the interview, that are made available through academic publications or other academic outlets will also be anonymized using code numbers. Contact details (e.g. e-mails) will not be passed on to third parties, but may be used by the researchers to contact participants, trace infection chains, or to send you further details of the study. According to the GDPR, the researchers will inform the participants using their contact details if a confidential data breach has been detected.
6. Identification of Investigators
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact:
