Keynotes ETLTC & ICETM 2026

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Ziegler - Professor, Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, Germany

AI-Powered Analytics in Technical Communication: 

Advancing Information Management toward Content Data Science

Technical Communication (TC), as an interdisciplinary field within information management, is shaped by applied linguistics, computer science, and user-centered media design. Its primary goal is to create, manage, and deliver concise information tailored to the needs of its recipients. In modern settings, this is typically supported by topic-based content enriched with semantic metadata, such as PI classifications. 

So far, analytics in TC has received limited academic attention and has been applied in industry mainly through a few specialized tools. These tools focus on metrics and KPIs such as linguistic content quality parameters or content reuse performance within content management processes. On the delivery side, user experience has been explored mainly through usability studies and web analytics of user behavior, often with an emphasis on sales-oriented contexts. 

In our recent approach, we aim to expand analytics in TC by leveraging AI—particularly language models—within an interactive environment called the PIAI-Lab. In collaborative business–academic projects, our goal is to provide easier access to analytical insights derived from content ensembles originating in content management systems (CMS) and used in various delivery scenarios. More broadly, our research focuses on three use cases: Content engineering in the pre-CMS phase, Content analytics within content management processes, and KPIs for content delivery in AI-driven environments such as chat systems and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). 

We present typical approaches for these use cases in academic studies and derive characteristic properties of topic ensembles explored within the PIAI-Lab.