Martin Dechant

Brief biography

Dr. Martin Dechant focuses in his research on how digital technologies and immersive media can be used within the context of mental health.

One major focus in this work is social anxiety, where he investigates how digital media can help affected individuals to assess the severity of their anxiety and how digital media, especially digital games, may help individuals to overcome their own anxiety. These insights can help to further understand the complex interplay of mental health and (in)- game preferences and activities, as well as further help designers to develop more elaborated tools for the assessment and intervention of mental health issues.
Besides that, he also investigates how novel interaction technologies, such as eye tracking, can increase the enjoyment of digital games and may be used as tools for the assessment of mental health.

After finishing his Master of Science in Media Informatics at the University of Regensburg with Prof. Dr. Christian Wolff he worked as a user experience designer for several companies, such as SensoMotoric Instruments GmbH (bought by Apple in 2017) and Tobii, as well as lecturer (University of Regensburg, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich). 
2017 he joined the HCI lab at the University of Saskatchewan where he worked with Prof. Dr. Regan Mandryk on the usage of digital games as tools for assessing social anxiety. After the PhD, Dr. Martin Dechant worked as visual perception research at the vision science lab of ZEISS vision care Germany in Tuebingen.
He joined UCLIC as a lecturer digital mental health in the beginning of 2023.