Face of Prof. Dr. Jan Borchers

Prof. Dr. Jan Borchers

Head

Room 2.41
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+49 241 80-21050
To set up a meeting, please see my basic schedule, then contact my administrator, Clarissa de Gavarelli.

Jan Borchers is full professor of computer science and head of the Media Computing Group, an endowed Chair in the Computer Science Department at RWTH Aachen University.

With his research group, he explores the field of human-computer interaction, with a particular interest in new user interfaces for soft robotics, 3D printing and personal fabrication, augmented reality, mobile, wearable, and tangible computing, interfaces for software development, and interactive guides and exhibits. In 2009, he opened Germany's first Fab Lab.

Jan established his group in 2003 and pioneered conducting modern HCI academic research and teaching in Germany [1]. It soon became a leading German lab in terms of archival publications at CHI, the top international conference in Human–Computer Interaction. Before joining RWTH, he held faculty positions at Stanford University and ETH Zurich, after receiving his PhD 'summa cum laude' in computer science from Darmstadt University of Technology in 2000. His PhD thesis, A Pattern Approach to Interaction Design, became the first book to bring the concept of design patterns to Human–Computer Interaction.

He is a member of ACM, SIGCHI, SIGCHI Germany, and GI, and introduced the Interactivity format to the CHI conference in 2005. He has also provided usability talks, trainings and consulting, as well as design, prototyping, and evaluation of user interfaces, for clients such as AirBus, Apple, ARD, Bayer, Children's Museum Boston, Daimler, Handelsblatt, OTIS, Scout24, TEDx, and Deutsche Telekom.

You can find him on Twitter at @borchers. For urgent matters, please contact his assistant, Clarissa de Gavarelli.

Publications

Selected Awards

 
 

Usability: 4 Prinzipien guter User Interfaces

RWTH-Wissenschaftsnacht 2024

 Best Science Slam
 

FingerFlux: Near-surface Haptic Feedback on Tabletops

Paper & Demo at UIST 2011

 Best Demos

Selected Talks

Selected Professional Activities

For Students

For Industry

Jan frequently works for clients in industry and government as usability consultant, speaker, and trainer.

Some Research Pointers

Creative Commons License

Useful Hacks

  • Easier German umlauts on a US keyboard for macOS
  • Toggle iCloud Private Relay: A useful macro to turn Apple's Private Relay on and off for multi-page website interactions that require to see your IP address (2024).
  • CHI Pages Template: An Apple Pages document template for archival Papers and Notes for the ACM CHI Conference Proceedings
  • TimeStamper: A quick hack to capture time stamps into a text file while doing other tasks on macOS (useful for marking important moments while recording a screencast, for example).
  • Function Keys: UI scripts to toggle between hardware and software function key mappings on macOS
  • More on our group's software page

Administrative

Personal

Older information on Jan's Stanford homepage, from his time at Stanford University (2001–2003).

Attachments:
File Description File size Downloads Last modified
Toolkits.pdf Presentation at UCSD, Jan 23, 2008 21983 kB 12433 2008-01-24 22:42
iDiscover Aixplorer Talk.pdf   7099 kB 9179 2009-11-13 15:04
100114 Apple HigherEd Conference Borchers.pdf   8121 kB 11542 2010-02-02 15:54
borchers_7154.jpg   5890 kB 15338 2010-03-30 10:20
borchers_5126.jpg   3022 kB 12962 2010-03-30 10:21

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