René Schäfer
Research Assistant
Room 2.38
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+49 241 80-21067
My name is René and I joined the Media Computing group in late 2020 as a Research Assistant. Currently, my main focus is on countermeasures against deceptive (or dark) patterns in user interfaces. Previously, I supported our research group in the field of textile interfaces (see our RIME project).
Research Projects
Administrative Role
I am the i10 librarian. This includes maintaining the software for labeling books, maintaining publications, maintaining the CHI rankings page, and keeping the Hochschulbibliothek up to date. More information can be found on the Librarian page.
Additionally, I took over the coordination of our Fab Lab from Marcel Lahaye.
Professional Activities
- MuC 2025 Reviewer (Full Paper)
- IDC 2025 Reviewer (Work-in-Progress)
- CHI Play 2025 Reviewer (Full Paper)
- CHI 2025 Co-Facilitator (Special Interest Group)
- CHI 2025 Reviewer (Late-Breaking Work)
- CHI 2025 Reviewer (Full Paper)
- Journal on Responsible Computing 2024 Reviewer (Full Paper)
- MuC 2024 Reviewer (Short Paper)
- NordiCHI 2024 Reviewer (Full Paper)
- CHI 2024 Co-Facilitator (Workshop)
- CHI 2024 Reviewer (Late-Breaking Work)
- IDC 2024 Reviewer (Full Paper)
- MuC 2023 Reviewer (Full Paper)
- IMWUT 2023 Reviewer (Full Paper)
- CHI 2023 Reviewer (Late-Breaking Work)
Student Assistants
| Former Student Assistants |
|---|
| Esra Güney (Fab Lab) |
| Gaetano Privitera (Fab Lab) |
| Lea Schirp (Research) |
| Simon Löhr (Fab Lab) |
| Rene Niewianda (Fab Lab) |
Teaching
| Semester | Course |
|---|---|
| SS 2025 | Multimodal Media Madness Lab tutor |
| WS 2024/2025 | Media Computing Project Lab tutor |
| SS 2024 | Multimodal Media Madness Lab tutor |
| WS 2023/2024 | iOS Application Development Lecture TA, with Anke Brocker |
| SS 2023 | Proseminar: Human-Computer Interaction Organizer |
| WS 2022/2023 | iOS Application Development Lecture TA, with Oliver Nowak |
| SS 2022 | Seminar: Post-Desktop User Interfaces Organizer |
| WS 2021/2022 | Seminar: Post-Desktop User Interfaces Organizer |
| WS 2021/2022 | Media Computing Project Lab tutor |
| SS 2021 | Proseminar: Human-Computer Interaction Organizer, with Simon Völker |
| WS 2020/2021 | Media Computing Project Lab tutor |
Thesis Supervisions
Usually, I am looking for students who want to do their theses on Deceptive/Dark Patterns. Current supervisions are marked with *
| Name | Title | Type | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lars vom Bruch | TBA (Automatically Removing Deceptive Patterns on Websites) | Bachelor's Thesis | Summer 2025 |
| Lucia Karl* | TBA (Prompting Strategies vs. Deceptive Patterns) | Bachelor's Thesis | Summer 2025 |
| Sophie Hahn* | Exploring LLM-as-a-Judge for Iterative Deceptive Pattern Removal From Websites | Bachelor's Thesis | Summer 2025 |
| Julia Kemp* | User Perspectives on Countermeasures Against Deceptive Patterns | Bachelor's Thesis | Summer 2025 |
| Maximilian Hosch* | Automatically Detecting Deceptive Patterns on Websites | Bachelor's Thesis | Winter 2024 |
| Phillip Ahlers* | Immersive Collaborative Story Telling in the VR CAVE | Bachelor's Thesis, co-supervised with Paul Preuschoff | Winter 2024 |
| Peter Wallmeyer | Evaluation and test-driven integration of the SWOFI lecturer interface | Bachelor's Thesis, 2nd supervision | Winter 2024 |
| Ilja Girnus* | Lumi: Adjustable Countermeasures Against Dark Patterns on the Web | Master's Thesis | Winter 2024 |
| Lidia Hakim | Analyzing Deceptive Patterns in German Mobile Applications | Bachelor's Thesis, co-supervised with Paul Preuschoff | Summer 2024 |
| Nikita Zaloga | Classify to Remember: Improving A Learning Game On Dark Patterns in User Interfaces | Bachelor's Thesis, co-supervised with Kevin Fiedler | Summer 2024 |
| Anubhav Punetha | Dark Patterns in User Interfaces: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis | Bachelor's Thesis | Summer 2024 |
| Lea Schirp* | The Effects of Deceptive Interface Design on Users With Autism | Master's Thesis | Summer 2024 |
| David Brenn | Analyse der Nutzung eines Learning Analytics Dashboards | Bachelor's Thesis, 2nd supervision | Summer 2024 |
| Viola Graf | Designing a Modular Browser Extension for Visual Countermeasures Against Dark Patterns | Bachelor's Thesis | Winter 2023 |
| Moritz Failing | Exploring the Effect of Bright Patterns on Dark Pattern Perception | Master's Thesis, co-supervised with Sarah Sahabi | Winter 2023 |
| Nele Zielke | Exploring Dark Pattern Research within CHI: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis | Bachelor's Thesis | Winter 2023 |
| Kerem Yavuz | Digital Natives' Dilemma: How Gen Z Perceives Deceptive Designs | Bachelor's Thesis | Winter 2023 |
| Kevin Fiedler | Exploring Game Mechanics for the Design of Dark Pattern Learning Games | Master's Thesis | Winter 2023 |
| Florian Plümäkers | Creating Data Sets for Dark Patterns on the Web using Systematic Run-Throughs | Bachelor's Thesis | Summer 2023 |
| Lukas Gruler | Unconscious and Gradual Interventions: Mitigating Excessive Usage of Infinite Scrolling Apps Featuring Short-Form Videos | Master's Thesis, 2nd supervision | Summer 2023 |
| Dustin Schneider | Position Tracking of Magnetic Dipoles Using a Modular AMR Sensor Grid | Master's Thesis | Winter 2022 |
| Sarah Sahabi | Prevalent Dark Patterns: Investigating Children's Mental Models of Malicious Designs | Master's Thesis | Winter 2022 |
| Paul Preuschoff | Designing Countermeasures Against Dark Pattern in User Interfaces | Master's Thesis | Winter 2022 |
| Paul Nitzke | An Intelligent Assistant for Annotating Data in a Learning Analytics Dashboard | Bachelor's Thesis, 2nd supervision | Winter 2022 |
| Elisabeth Buttkus | Measuring Perceived Haptic Similarities Between Textile Icons | Bachelor's Thesis, co-supervised with Oliver Nowak | Winter 2022 |
| Julia Reim | Investigating Peripheral Feedback for Sitting Posture Guidance | Master's Thesis | Summer 2022 |
| Ulyana Lavnikevich | Investigating Modalities for Supplemental Notifications in Online Presentations via a Wrist-Worn Device | Bachelor's Thesis | Summer 2022 |
| Laura Drescher-Manaa | Designing a Magnetic Field Sensor Grid for 2D Mid-air Gesture Recognition | Bachelor's Thesis | Summer 2022 |
| Friedrich Kriegsheim | Evaluation and Enhancement of Lecturers' User Experience in an eLearning Application | Bachelor's Thesis, 2nd supervision | Summer 2022 |
| Lovis Suchmann | Textile Icons: Investigating Shape Properties to Improve Haptic Recognition | Master's Thesis, co-supervised with Oliver Nowak | Winter 2021 |
| Nikita Huber | Avoiding Accidental Input: Evaluating Activation and Confirmation Techniques on Textile Sliders | Bachelor's Thesis, co-supervised with Oliver Nowak | Winter 2021 |
| Huy Dao | Development of a Hand Detection on a Large-Area Textile Capacitive Pressure Sensor Matrix | Bachelor's Thesis | Summer 2021 |
| Mahsa Mansouri | The Taxonomy of Indoor Home Interfaces | Bachelor's Thesis, co-supervised with Oliver Nowak | Summer 2021 |
| Michael Assad | What would change if I used a different material? Exploring Visualisations of Dynamic Parameter-Based Adaptions in Collaborative Process Documentation for Makers | Bachelor's Thesis, co-supervised with Marcel Lahaye | Summer 2021 |
Publications
- Paul Preuschoff, Sarah Sahabi, René Schäfer, Lea Schirp, Marcel Lahaye and Jan Borchers. Groups vs. Booking Websites: Investigating Collaborative Strategies Against Deceptive Patterns. In Extended Abstracts of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '25, pages 9, Association for Computing Machinery, April 2025.
- René Schäfer, Paul Preuschoff, Rene Niewianda, Sophie Hahn, Kevin Fiedler and Jan Borchers. Don't Detect, Just Correct: Can LLMs Defuse Deceptive Patterns Directly?. In Extended Abstracts of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '25, pages 11, Association for Computing Machinery, April 2025.
- Julian Wallerius, Pascal Raabe, Erik Østlyngen, Nuray Agaoglu, Lars vom Bruch, Siyan Chen, Mats Frenk, Yitong Guo, David Elias Chris Kopczynski, Hana Masara, Thomas Pollert, Shu Zhang, René Schäfer and Jan Borchers. The Deceptive Dungeon: Bringing Deceptive Patterns to the Physical World. In Extended Abstracts of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '25, pages 4, Association for Computing Machinery, April 2025.
- Katie Seaborn, Colin M Gray, Johanna Gunawan Thomas Mildner, René Schäfer, Lorena Sánchez Chamorro and Satoshi Nakamura. Global and Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Dark Patterns and Deceptive Design Practice. In Extended Abstracts of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '25, pages 6, Association for Computing Machinery, April 2025.
- Eszter Vigh, Ellen Weir, Grace Stangroome, Nathalie Alexandra “Alex” Tcherdakoff, Yelu Gu, Oussama Metatla, Mamoru Watanabe, René Schäfer, Sophie Hahn, Konrad Krawczyk, Marcela Godoy, Rodolfo Cossovich, Randy Morin, Kristine Dreaver-Charles, Marguerite Koole and Bennett Lewis. Lost in Translation: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Linguistic Inaccessibility in HCI. In Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '25, pages 12, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, April 2025.
- René Schäfer, Sarah Sahabi, Paul Preuschoff and Jan Borchers. Leveraging Digital Accessibility Using Generative AI.April 2025.
- Oliver Nowak, René Schäfer, Elisabeth Jane Buttkus, Lea Emilia Schirp, Heiko Müller and Jan Borchers. Investigating Eyes-Free Recognition and Distinguishability of Textile Icons in Pairs. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, TEI '25, pages 13, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, March 2025.
- Kevin Fiedler, René Schäfer, René Röpke and Jan Borchers. "Deception Detected!" — A Serious Game About Detecting Dark Patterns. In Proceedings of International Conference on Games and Learning Alliance, GALA' 24, pages 10, Springer, November 2024.
- René Schäfer, Sarah Sahabi, Annabell Brocker and Jan Borchers. Growing Up With Dark Patterns: How Children Perceive Malicious User Interface Designs. In Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, NordiCHI' 24, pages 17, Association for Computing Machinery, October 2024.
- Alexander Löbel, René Schäfer, Hanna Püschel, Esra Güney and Ulrike Meyer. Access Your Data... If You Can: An Analysis of Dark Patterns Against the Right of Access on Popular Websites. In Privacy Technologies and Policy, APF 2024, pages 23–47, Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham, August 2024.
- Colin M Gray, Johanna Gunawan, René Schäfer, Nataliia Bielova, Lorena Sánchez Chamorro, Katie Seaborn, Thomas Mildner and Hauke Sandhaus. Mobilizing Research and Regulatory Action on Dark Patterns and Deceptive Design Practices. In Extended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '24, pages 6, Association for Computing Machinery, May 2024.
- René Schäfer, Paul Preuschoff, René Röpke, Sarah Sahabi and Jan Borchers. Fighting Malicious Designs: Towards Visual Countermeasures Against Dark Patterns. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI' 24, pages 13, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, May 2024.
- René Schäfer, Paul Miles Preuschoff and Jan Borchers. Investigating Visual Countermeasures Against Dark Patterns in User Interfaces. In Mensch Und Computer 2023, MuC '23, pages 161–172, Association for Computing Machinery, September 2023.
- Sebastian Hueber, Johannes Wilhelm, René Schäfer, Simon Voelker and Jan Borchers. User-Aware Rendering: Merging the Strengths of Device- and User-Perspective Rendering in Handheld AR. In Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., pages 18, number MHCI, September 2023.
- Jan Borchers, Anke Brocker, Sebastian Hueber, Oliver Nowak, René Schäfer, Adrian Wagner, Paul Miles Preuschoff and Lea Emilia Schirp. The Aachen Lab Demo: From Fundamental Perception to Design Tools. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '23, pages 4, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, April 2023.
- René Schäfer, Tobias Wagner, Ulyana Lavnikevich and Jan Borchers. Enhancing Notification Awareness for Online Presenters via a Wrist-Worn Device. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '23, pages 6, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, April 2023.
- René Schäfer, Oliver Nowak, Lovis Bero Suchmann, Sören Schröder and Jan Borchers. What’s That Shape? Investigating Eyes-Free Recognition of Textile Icons. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI '23, pages 12, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, April 2023.
- Anke Brocker, René Schäfer, Christian Remy, Simon Voelker and Jan Borchers. Flowboard: How Seamless, Live, Flow-Based Programming Impacts Learning to Code for Embedded Electronics. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, pages 36, number 1, March 2023.
- Oliver Nowak, René Schäfer, Anke Brocker, Philipp Wacker and Jan Borchers. Shaping Textile Sliders: An Evaluation of Form Factors and Tick Marks for Textile Sliders. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI '22, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, April 2022.
- René Schäfer. Redesigning ARPen: Evaluating Different Marker Placements for Mid-Air Pen Interaction. Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, June 2020.