Professor for Conceptual Design and Media Theorie

I am Professor of Conceptional Design and Media Theory at HTW Dresden and, since 2024, Dean of the Faculty of Design. Born in Berlin in 1979 and trained as a communication designer, I have spent the past twenty years studying how each new generation of digital tools shifts the logic of designing and the balance of power in design.

On Research & Teaching

RESEARCH

Since 2006 I have been studying the developmental history of digital design tools, platforms and interfaces – their promises, affordances, actual uses, implicit assumptions, disappointments and unintended repurposings. Behind this lies a lasting interest in the political dimension of such interactive, shared artefacts, understood as multi-stakeholder tools.
My concern is to better understand and make visible how power relations shift, harden and find expression in the form of technologically shaped design tools and platforms – how platforms, for instance, govern both technically (through the interface) and legally (through their terms of service) who is allowed to see and do what.
This question has taken on changing subjects over the years without itself changing: design in virtual worlds (Parallel Realitäten, 2006), the blurring line between professionals and amateurs in the early social web (Kritische Masse, 2010), and crowdsourcing in design (doctorate at the Royal College of Art, 2011–2015, published as Crowd Design: From Tools for Empowerment to Platform Capitalism, Birkhäuser, 2017). From there it led to the hidden human labour behind supposed automation – the crowdsourced production of training data for self-driving cars (Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, 2019; "The Planetary Stacking Order of Multilayered Crowd-AI Systems," in Digital Work in the Planetary Market, MIT Press, 2022). Where it was needed, I have developed my own ordering models for this work – among them a categorisation of the platform economy, used in policy advice, that sorts labour platforms not by sector but by the features that determine how they can be regulated (location-bound and person-bound).
My current interest is in the aesthetics and economics of AI-based image generators and software tools, the renewed shift in the conditions of production for designers that comes with them – and, of course, what this means for the future of design education.
In recent years the output of my research has moved from academic studies and policy reports towards developing and testing new public, playful formats – a form better suited to teaching at an applied design faculty, and one that also works better as an experimental way into, and a contribution to, the volatile discourse around AI. Examples are the Prompt Battle (2022–24, developed with Prof. Sebastian Schmieg and students of the Faculty of Design), the Slop Night, and most recently, in November 2025, the participatory teaching format Deep Fried Design (an "AI week").
I am convinced that new technologies – and new design tools all the more – can only be understood and criticised if one gathers one's own practical experience with them and then takes that into discussion with others. At some point it again needs the analytical, distanced overview that only writing provides. Either way, I understand design not merely as an object of research but as a method of inquiry.

TEACHING

At the centre of my teaching is the conceptual dimension of design: the engagement with the message of a design and with one's own stance towards it. In the age of generative AI, design authorship strikes me as ever more important. When form can be produced automatically, it is, more than ever, the stance behind a design that makes a difference and is worth paying attention to – amid a flood of slop.
The medium in which students explore their voice as authors is not fixed. In my courses the classic written essay has increasingly given way to the video essay – a form in which students develop, support and give shape to an argument of their own. My experience is that, among design students at least, this leads to much higher motivation: producing a designed media piece for a concrete audience, one they can use in their own portfolio, makes the considerable extra effort of video production no longer feel like an obstacle.
Being able to write well remains an important foundation – for structuring one's own thinking and for persuading others – but the aim is argumentative authorship, not writing as an exercise for its own sake.
Under the impression of generative and increasingly agentic AI in particular, I understand teaching as shared experimentation rather than the transfer of settled knowledge about a technology that is reinventing itself by the day. Formats such as the Deep Fried Design AI Week and the Slop Night are therefore built on participation rather than passive consumption, and on lateral exchange between teachers and students: only those who try things out themselves understand – and only those who understand can design responsibly.

Publications

Books and studies       (Google Scholar; ResearchGate)

•  »The Planetary Stacking Order of Multilayered Crowd-AI Systems«, book chapter in: Digital Work in the Planetary Market, Eds.: Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari, MIT Press, 2022 (Open Access online)
• »Crowdproduktion von Trainingsdaten«, Ed.: Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, 2019 (German / condensed English version)
• »Crowd Design: From Tools for Empowerment to Platform Capitalism«, Birkhäuser 2017 (Publisher)
•  »Der Job als Gig: Digital vermittelte Dienstleistungen in Berlin«, Ed.: ArbeitGestalten on behalf of the Berlin Senate, 2017 (online)
•  »Arbeitsmärkte in der Plattformökonomie: Zu den Herausforderungen von Crowdwork und Gigwork«, Ed.: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2016 (online)
•  »Crowd Work: Zurück in die Zukunft«, Ed.: Christiane Benner, Bund-Verlag, 2014 (Publisher)
•  »The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Why Crowdsourcing Needs Ethics«, International Conference on CrowdWork and Social Computing, University of Karlsruhe, 2013 (PDF)
•  »For a Few Dollars More: Class Action Against Crowdsourcing«, Digital Aesthetics Research Center, Aarhus, 2013, awarded the Core77 Design Award for Writing & Commentary (Journal)
•  »Gamer als Designer: Nutzergenerierte Inhalte in Computerspielen«, Informatik Spektrum, Springer Science+Business Media, 2010 (PDF)
•  »Kritische Masse: Von Profis und Amateuren im Design«, form + zweck, 2010 (Publisher)
•  »Volkssport Design: Nachspiel«, conference proceedings, 2010
•  »Parallel Realitäten«, Niggli, 2006, winner: Braun-Feldweg Förderpreis for critical writing on design
  
  Editor-in-chief, agenda design magazine
•  #5 Antrieb (Autumn 2017); lead article: »Formen der Autonomie«, on the self-driving car as a design problem
• #4 Experimente (Spring 2017); lead article: »Speculative Design«, on the future as a thought experiment
• #3 Identität (Autumn 2016); lead article: »Einzigartigkeit am Fließband«, on crowdsourcing as a source of disposable identities
• #2 Grenzen (Spring 2016); lead article: »#Neuland«, on the ethics and aesthetics of the »seasteading« phenomenon

• #1 Sichtbarkeit (Autumn 2015); lead article: »Ich sehe was, das Du nicht siehst«, on posters with facial recognition
   

  Journalistic texts, essays, interviews (selection)

• »Unevenly Distributed«, essay on the production of training data, in the book: A Cat, A Dog, A Microwave: Cultural Practices and Politics of Image Datasets, The Photographers' Gallery, London, 2023 (online)
• »Uncanny Home Working«, essay with Sebastian Schmieg, in the book How do we want to work together (…), Sternberg Press, 2023
• »Programme mit Bewusstsein sind Fiktion«, interview with Dr Ralf Herbrich, Director of Machine Learning at Amazon; t3n #54, 2018 (online)
• »Aus Darwins Sicht sind wir Pfauen«, interview with Prof. Dr Hartmut Böhme; designreport 2/2018
• »Hardware is Hard«, double interview with Kickstarter & Lofelt on new business models for designers, designreport 5/2017
• »Gehirne in die Cloud laden? Absurd!«, interview with AI researcher Raúl Rojas, t3n #46, 2015 (online)
• »Dieser Mann will Facebook zerschlagen«, interview with Jaron Lanier, t3n #45, 2016 (online)
• »Wie Büroarchitektur Innovation fördert«, t3n #42, 2015 (online)
• »Die Revolution wird nicht 3D gedruckt«, on the politics of the maker scene, German Society for Design Theory and Research, 2013
• »Futuristische Pixelnostalgie: Die Gestaltung des Morgens am Beispiel der New Aesthetic«, FROH!, #9, 2012
• »Monster Soup: Making the Invisible Visible«, Unmaking Things, blog of the Victoria & Albert Museum, 2011, honourable mention: Core77 Design Award for Writing & Commentary
• »Quirky: Gestaltung durch die Massen«, bauhaus, #3, 2012
• »London Calling: Experiment mit Tradition«, designreport 2/2012
• »Volkssport Design: live and let live?«, eye, #74, 2009
• »Semantische Tektonik«, Reinventing the Virtual City, Arch+, 2009
• »Web der Extreme: Flickering vs. Frugal«, form, #227, 2009

• »Design in Second Life«, form, #215, 2007
   

  Recent talks (selection)

• »Transcendent Beauty as a Service«, The Art of Neuroscience, Amsterdam, June 2023
• »Prompt, click, and hope for the best. Über Wert und Halbwertszeit von Sprache als Interface für Gestaltungswerkzeuge«, with Sebastian Schmieg, Everyday AI – Künstliche Intelligenz in gegenwärtigen Interface-Kulturen, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, May 2023
• Click and Collect: Show me your dataset, Somerset House, online
• »/imagine an overheated debate:: #AIart, trending on Twitter, 4K «, transmediale, Berlin, February 2023
• Bundestag Enquete Commission on Artificial Intelligence, Berlin, January 2020
• »CAPTCHA! Schwarzmarkt für nützliches Wissen und Nicht-Wissen«, Deutsches Hygienemuseum, Dresden, December 2020
• Science Platform Sustainability, workshop »Nachhaltigkeitsziele und die globale Einbettung von Arbeit«, Munich, November 2019
• Reshaping Work Conference, Amsterdam, October 2019
• »The Influencing Machine – Von Bots, Arbeit und Politik«, neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst nGbK
• »Who Does What? Work Performed, Delegated, Outsourced …«, exhibition curated by Silvio Lorusso, Drugo More, Rijeka, February 2019
• Workshop of the ILO and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs on the future of work, Berlin, August 2018
• Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) expert workshop »Measuring the Platform Economy: Size and Impact«, Brussels, April 2018
• Panel »Plattformökonomie und soziale personenbezogene Dienstleistungen«, FES & AWO, Berlin, March 2018
• »Foodora, Helpling, MyHammer – welche Rahmenbedingungen braucht die Plattformökonomie?«, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Munich, November 2017
• Berlin Senate & ArbeitGestalten GmbH »Dienstleistung via Plattform: Gute Arbeit in der Gig Econonmy?!«, Berlin, November 2017