Prof. Dr. Arne Berger

Fachbereich 5 - Informatik und Sprachen

Prof. Dr. Arne Berger

I am Professor of Human Computer Interaction at Hochschule Anhalt and I am fascinated by the complex, idiosyncratic and unintended interactions between humans and digital technology. My work is influenced by the Scandinavian tradition of Participatory Design, which recognizes that those who will be affected by a future technology should have an active say in its creation. My research focuses on early phases of design and development processes. I am interested in how participation can be initiated and supported by co-design tools and co-design methods, and how it can be sustained by co-design labs. Currently I am particularly interested in the design space of smart connected things and services in the context of the home. With my work I strive to support people in imagining alternative futures, to explore these futures and to critically reflect upon them. I was born in the 70s in Karl-Marx-Stadt, studied design at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar with Prof. Dr. Walter Bauer-Wabnegg, Nicole Heidtke and Wolfgang Keller (Diploma Media Design 2013) and I have a doctorate from Technische Universität Chemnitz, where I was supervised by Prof. Dr. Maximilian Eibl and Prof. Dr. Michael Herczeg. I am ENTJ and left-handed. Before my academic career I taught typography, I am somewhat well travelled and take local food a bit too serious.

Research

I am closely connected with the international HCI community through joint publications and workshops and have completed research visits at QUT Brisbane (Australia) with Prof. Margot Brereton, at Berkeley, CA (USA) with Prof. Aaron Marcus and at the Everyday Design Studio at SFU Burnaby (Canada) with Prof. Will Odom. I publish at ACM CHI and ACM DIS and review regularly for ACM CHI, ACM DIS, ACM TEI, ACM CSCW, Mensch und Computer, I was also a program committee member for ACM DIS 2020.At the German Mensch und Computer Conference I regularly host the workshop »Participatory and Socially Responsible Technology Development« together with Prof. Claude Draude. I am the speaker of the special interest group Participatory Design and member of the steering committee of the section Human Computer Interaction in the Gesellschaft für Informatik. I am co-applicant of the BMBF project Mitmach X at the TU Chemnitz, founding member of the Netzwerk Integrierte Forschung and an active supporter of the ThingsCon network. Previously, I was the principal investigator of Miteinander, a BMBF-funded junior researcher group in the context of interdisciplinary competence building for HCI in the context of demographic change (2.5 Mio Euro, 5 years).

Teaching

With my teaching I follow a practice-based-research approach. As a professor, I bring multidisciplinary modes of inquiry into the classroom and aim to engage students with the real-life contexts of those they will design for and with. I believe that students’ learning experience improves through an approach that is deeply linked to the life experiences of those they design for, and that this is encouraged by hands-on approaches. This style of teaching also allows students to practically engage with research methods from constructive (interaction design, prototyping) and reconstructive (sociology, ethnography) paradigms. In the long run this also enables them to develop situated mixed method approaches at the intersection of these paradigms.I teach foundation classes in media design and human computer interaction, and offer advanced modules in interaction design, research-through design and design methods. In addition, I am committed to a curriculum that fosters the social responsibility of computer science.


Publikationen