Sebastian Deterding

Sebastian Deterding is a designer and researcher working on user experience, video games, persuasive technology and gameful design. He is broadly interested in how code shapes conduct – and how to put that knowledge into practice. He is a PhD researcher in Communication at the Graduate School of the Research Center for Media and Communication, Hamburg University, supported by a grant of the Hamburg Federal Initiative of Research Excellence. He is also an affiliated researcher at the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research in Hamburg, and works as an independent user experience designer.

Prior to this, he worked several years as user experience designer at Europe’s largest magazine publisher, Gruner+Jahr, and as Program Manager Multimedia at the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, with brief stints at the UNESCO Information Society Divison, Paris and the Centre for Higher Education Development, Gütersloh. He studied Comparative Literature, Communication Science, Psychology and Philosophy at the Westphalian Wilhelms University, Münster and Brown University, Providence (RI), and holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature. He was the product manager of Germany’s most popular voting-related e-democracy application, Wahl-O-Mat, project lead of a social networking site for civic youth engagement, and project lead UX on the redesign of one of Germany’s largest news sites, and is regularly consulting and designing for startups, brands and game companies.

He publishes and speaks internationally on the persuasive design of digital media and games, gameful design, the governance of new media, and frame analysis in HCI, game studies, and communication. His work has been covered by The Guardian, The New Scientist, the Los Angeles Times, EDGE Magazine, and Fast Company’s Co.Design among others. He remains incredulous that his youth of boardgaming and dungeon keeping should have amounted to something in the end.