Prof. Boris Müller

Professor for Interaction Design

Committees & Offices

2. Deputy to the Dean

Associate Dean for Special Assignments: Program Director for Interface Design

Further development of Incom and digitalization projects in the Department of Design

Research and Development Representative at the Urban Complexity Lab (UCLAB)

Unit

Department of Design

Institute for Applied Research Urban Futures (IaF)

boris.mueller@fh-potsdam.de

Phone

+49 331 580-4423

Room

D.2.03

(

House D

)

Office hours

Wednesday 10.00 am – 11.00 am (does not apply during the lecture-free period), registration via the Dean's Office

Main fields of activity (research, teaching)

Research topics

Data Visualisation
Interaction Design
Generative Design

CV

born 1972 in Berlin

After studying design at the University of the Arts Bremen, Boris Müller went to the Royal College of Art in London, where he graduated with a Master of Arts in Computer Related Design. His professional career has taken him to MetaDesign San Francisco, the Institute for Media Communication of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and finally the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (Italy), where he worked as a researcher and visiting professor. Since May 2004, Boris Müller is Professor of Interaction Design at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, where he played a key role in establishing the Interface Design degree programme. Together with Prof. Dr. Marian Dörk, he is the head of the Urban Complexity Lab – a research group focusing on data visualisation and information design. His projects have received a number of international design awards.

Awards

2000 »Special Distinction« at the »Lucky Strike Junior Designer Award«
2001 1st prize in the student category of the EuroPrix
2000 »Excellence Award« of the »4th ACA Media Arts Festival« in Tokyo
2002 »Honourable Mention« of the rhizome.org Net Art Commission
2003 »Certificate of Typographic Excellence« from the Type Directors Club New York
2003 »100 best posters« (»100 Beste Plakate«)
2005 iF design award
2013 Information is Beautiful Silver Award
2014 German Infographics Award, category »Science«

Publications at FHP from 2018 onwards (according to core data set for research)

2026

Boris Müller (2026): The Interface is Content: User interfaces need to be improved - not removed.

2025

Boris Müller (2025): Design Against the Machine: Instead of banning AI tools, I made them a requirement for a speculative design class.
Tehilla Shwartz Altshuoler, Rachel Aridor Hershkovitz, Romi Mikulinsky, Boris Müller (2025): Governing phygital spaces: Human rights by design meets speculative design
Internet policy review, Band 14, Heft 4.
Markus Kreutzer, Aya Bentur, Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, Romi Mikulinsky, Boris Müller (2025): Phygital Vocabulary: Speculative Terms to Discuss the Implications of Emerging Reality-Forming Interfaces.
In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Culture and Computer Science: Remixing Analog and Digital. 22nd International Conference on Culture and Computer Science 2025. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.

2024

Boris Müller (2024): Research into Design through Design: A Visual History of the Latin Alphabet: Visualising the temporal and formal relationships of scripts and typefaces throughout the centuries.
Boris Müller (2024): The Disappearing User

2023

Boris Müller (2023): The Death of Three Apps

2022

Boris Müller (2022): Design Critique Culture
Boris Müller (2022): Essays as Design Theory
Boris Müller (2022): Tools Shape Our Products
Boris Müller (2022): Virtual Typography

2021

Jan Distelmeyer, Sophie Ehrmanntraut, Boris Müller (2021): Algorithmen & Zeichen: Beiträge von Frieder Nake zur Gegenwart des Computers.
45.
Cornelia Auer, Elmar Kriegler, Henrik Carlsen, Kasper Kok, Simona Pedde, Volker Krey, Boris Müller (2021): Climate change scenario services
Boris Müller (2021): Design for yourself! (Sometimes)
Boris Müller (2021): Forget Form Follows Function
Boris Müller (2021): Ghost in the Machine: Designing Interfaces for Machine Learning Features.
Boris Müller (2021): Making SENSES: A Project Report.
Boris Müller (2021): My Problem With Figma

2020

Boris Müller, Frank Rausch (2020): Menus, Metaphors and Materials: Milestones of User Interface Design.

2019

Boris Müller (2019): Drawing the Data Interface
Boris Müller (2019): Type Casting: or: The Comic Sans of Errors.

2018

Boris Müller (2018): Balancing Creativity and Usability
Boris Müller (2018): Strategies for Design-Science Collaborations
Boris Müller (2018): Why Do All Websites Look the Same?

2017

Boris Müller (2017): Bringing Design to Science
Boris Müller (2017): Design in Four Revolutions
Boris Müller (2017): In Defence of Intuition
Boris Müller (2017): Picture, Depiction and Deception: Why Data Visualisations are Cultural Images.

Additional publications

Online-Publikationen

Boris Müller veröffentlicht Beiträge zur Visualisierungs- und Designforschung auf seinem Blog.

Konferenzen, Publikationen und Vorträge (Auswahl)
2024

Datavis-Meetup #07 »Climate Visuals« (Vortrag 9.1.2024); Digital Hub Industry, Bremen
Datenvisualisierung (Vortrag und Workshop 24.5.2024); Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
TED-Talk »Speculative Software« (Vortrag 6.11.2024); Hans-Otto-Theater, Potsdam
Keynote auf der 10-Jahres-Feier des SAP Innovation Centers (Vortrag 27. 11. 2024); Potsdam

2023

Sprecher bei der Ringvorlesung AG Infografik (Vortrag 30.5.2023)

2022

Infografik und Datenvisualisierung (Vortrag 11. 11. 2022); Universität der Künste Berlin

2021

Climate Change Scenario Services: From Science To Facilitating Action; Cornelia Auer Elmar Kriegler Henrik Carlsen Kasper Kok Simona Pedde Volker Krey Boris Müller — One Earth – Volume 4 – Issue 8, 2021
Algorithmen & Zeichen: Beiträge von Frieder Nake zur Gegenwart des Computers; (Herausgeber Buchveröffentlichung); Jan Distelmeyer, Sophie Ehrmanntraut, Boris Müller: Algorithmen & Zeichen: Beiträge von Frieder Nake zur Gegenwart des Computers. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2021. - ISBN 978-3-865-99484-4

2020

Co-Designing Visualizations For Information Seeking And Knowledge Management; Marian Dörk Boris Müller Jan-Erik Stange Johannes Herseni Katja Dittrich — Open Information Science‚ 4(1), pages 217-235, 2020
Digitalisierung des Design (Vortrag 4. 11. 2020); Symposium »Generating Future«, Hochschule Düsseldorf
Rules in Design (Vortrag 28. 11. 2020); SHOW Conference, Utrecht, Niederlande

2018

Shifted Maps: Revealing Spatio-Temporal Topologies In Movement Data; Heike Otten Lennart Hildebrandt Till Nagel Marian Dörk Boris Müller — Proceedings of the IEEE VIS Arts Program, VISAP'18, 2018
Datenvisualisierung als Software-Interface (Vortrag 23. 11. 2018); Konferenz »Software@Work«, Hamburg
Bringing Design to Science (Vortrag 4. 5. 2018); Visualizing Knowledge Conference; Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

2017

Design zwischen Aufklärung und Verklärung (Vortrag 15. 12. 2017); Digital Design Learning Conference, Köln International School of Design (KISD), Germany
designscience sciencedesign (Vortrag 03. 12. 2017); Future Unknown Conference, Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing, China
Interaction (Vortrag 27. 11. 2017); Introduction to Digital Media, University of the Arts Bremen, Germany
Design Research at the Urban Complexity Lab (Vortrag 04. 07. 2017); Symposium SYNTHESIZER, Universität der Künste Berlin, Germany

2016

Culturegraphy; Kim Albrecht Marian Dörk Boris Müller — Leonardo, 2016
Data Worlds (Vortrag 15. 09. 2016); zusammen mit Moritz Stefaner; ; SAP UX Day SAP, Walldorf
Interfacedesign: eine unfassbare Gestaltungsdisziplin (Vortrag 10. 06. 2016); Workshop Politiken des Interfaces Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften (ZeM) Potsdam

2010

Nagel, T., Pschetz, L., Stefaner, M., Müller, B.: mæve – Eine interaktive Tabletop-Installation. In: Sieck, J. (Hrsg.), Kultur und Informatik: Interaktive Systeme, 2010.
»Messe Designers’ Open 2010 – Das Festival für Design Leipzig« Präsentation des mæve-Tisches. Dauer: 29. bis 31.10.2010, Leipzig.
URL: www.designersopen.de
Vortrag »Interactive Tabletops« am 29.10.2010, 17.00 Uhr im Hôtel de Pologne Auditorium, 1. OG, Leipzig.

2009

»Recording emotions with MyInnerLife« Elisabeth Eichhorn, Reto Wettach, Boris Müller. Conference Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction, 10–12 September 2009 in Amsterdam (Nl).
»User Activity Display: Competition or Conversation?« Tina Deiml-Seibt, Larissa Pschetz, Boris Müller. Tagung »Grenzenlos frei!?« Mensch und Computer 2009, 6–7 September in Berlin. ACM, German Chapter (In Press).
»A Conversational Model to Display User Activity.« Tina Deiml-Seibt, Larissa Pschetz, Boris Müller. 23rd BCS Conference on Human Computer Interaction – HCI2009, 1–5 September 2009 in Cambridge (UK). ACM, New York, NY. (In Press).
»mæve – An Interactive Tabletop Installation for Exploring Background Information in Exhibitions« Till Nagel, Larissa Pschetz, Moritz Stefaner, Matina Halkia, Boris Müller. 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 19–24 Juli 2009 in San Diego (US).