KITE II is developing an AI-powered, gamified application designed to help female founders become more resilient in dealing with discriminatory experiences during the startup process. KITE II builds on the findings from the KITE pilot project.
KI-Thinktank Female Entrepreneurship II - KITE II
Project ID: FKZ 3923406K04
01.01.2023–31.12.2025
Team Heilbronn University
- Prof. Dr. Nicola Marsden
Research Professorship in Social Informatics - Prof. Dr. Tim Reichert
Games Engineering - Team Lab for Social InformaticsSozioinformatik
Cooperation partners
bundesweite gründerinnenagentur (bga)/ Bildungswerk der Thüringer Wirtschaft e.V. (BWTW)
Contact: Anette Morhard
Research Approach and Contribution
Based on the results of the pilot project, the next step will be to proceed with the implementation of a corresponding application. In doing so, particular attention must be paid to ensuring that the implementation is sensitive to gender and diversity, because AI technologies are not neutral and—as has been criticized both scientifically and, increasingly, by the public—often lead to bias and discrimination.
The specific objective of KITE II is as follows: A user-centered and gender-equitable AI-supported, gamified application—developed in three iterations and evaluated with the target group—that helps (potential) female founders deal more resiliently with discriminatory experiences during the startup process will be completed by October 31, 2025.
In Kooperation mit:
Publications related to the project
- Biebl, Rebecca, Leidel, Julian, Tang, Yvonne, Herling, Claudia, Reichert, Tim & Marsden, Nicola. (2026). Dokumentation der KITE-Webanwendung. https://opus-hshn.bsz-bw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/493.
- Leidel, Julian, Reichert, Tim & Marsden, Nicola. (accepted). Turning Scripts into Scenarios: Validating, Emotion-Tagging, and Importing Visual Novels for Leadership and AI-Adoption Training. HCI International LNCS.
- Marsden, Nicola & Rothe-Wulf, Annelie. (accepted). Toward Scenario-Plausible, Non-Stereotypical Personas for AI Communication Training. HCI International LNCS.
- Marsden, Nicola, Herling, Claudia & Reichert, Tim. (accepted). Designing Bias-Aware AI Feedback in Interactive Dialogues: Insights from a Pilot Study. HCI International LNCS.
- Marsden, Nicola, Rothe-Wulf, Annelie, Tang, Yvonne, Herling, Claudia & Reichert, Tim. (2025). Navigating Bias: Using LLMs to Analyze Discrimination in Entrepreneurial Game Dialogues. HCI International, LNCS 15816, 202–219. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1007/978-3-031-92578-8_14.
- Marsden, Nicola. (2025a). Offenheit als Risiko und Ressource - Eine Fallstudie zur Gestaltung einer gamifizierten KI-Anwendung gegen Diskriminierung. INFORMATIK 2025 - Lecture Notes in Informatics, 593-602. https://dl.gi.de/items/2afd4371-e714-4696-adac-e6f5522aed5c.
- Marsden, Nicola. (2025b). Prompting Fairness: How End Users Can Mitigate Bias in AI Systems. HCI International, LNAI15820, 68-77. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1007/978-3-031-93415-5_4.
- Marsden, Nicola. (to appear 2026). Künstliche Intelligenz als soziales Phänomen: Ein Rahmenmodell für die Gestaltung sozialverantwortlicher Künstlicher Intelligenz. In Tanja Carstensen & Kathrin Ganz (Eds.), Künstliche Intelligenz – Arbeit – Geschlecht: BeltzJuventa.
- Reichert, Tim, Miftari, Mergim, Herling, Claudia & Marsden, Nicola. (2024). Empowering Female Founders with AI and Play: Integration of a Large Language Model into a Serious Game with Player-Generated Content. HCI International, LNCS 14731, Part II, 69-83. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-60695-3_5.
- Rothe-Wulf, Annelie, Sekar, Sri Durga & Marsden, Nicola. (accepted). Understanding Awareness of Biases and Mitigation Strategies in AI Applications: User Perceptions, Empowerment and Barriers to Effective Bias Reduction in Large Language Models. HCI International LNCS.
