Human Digital Twins for Sharing and Accessing Tacit Knowledge in University Research Labs

Tacit knowledge, such as understanding why research decisions were made in ongoing projects or knowing which approaches previously failed in similar studies, is essential to university research labs but often becomes inaccessible when experienced researchers leave. This is problematic because researchers often rely on asking the researcher who worked on a project. Recent advances in human digital twins (HDTs) offer new opportunities for preserving and mediating access to tacit knowledge beyond individual tenure. We conducted a participatory design workshop with six doctoral researchers using iterative 1-2-3-All design sequences for both sharing and accessing scenarios. Sketches and discussions highlight multimodal interaction and explanation needs, expectations of social presence, and the importance of embedding HDTs into existing workflows. Our findings provide design insights for systems that make individual expertise accessible and resilient across time and organizational change.