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Dr. rer. nat. Nina Gerber

Work and Engineering Psychology

Working area(s)

Work and Engineering Psychology

Contact

work +49 6151 16-24080

Work S1|15 11
Alexanderstr. 10
64283 Darmstadt

Dr. Nina Gerber (née Kolb) joined the research group Work and Engineering Psychology, where she heads the PIPS Lab, as a Scientific Staff Member in November 2020. Her research interests are primarily in the areas of user-centered.

As part of ATHENE, she leads two research projects:

PIONEER aims to develop a tool that supports users in protecting their privacy. It combines elements of knowledge transfer with persuasive elements to increase users' awareness and motivation to protect their privacy and thus empower them to achieve greater private sovereignty. Throughout the research and design process, the specific characteristics of the user groups are taken into account, which can lead to different requirements, e.g. for children, young people, parents or older people.

AIDA addresses manipulative design practices in digital services that mislead users into unintended actions and jeopardize their privacy. Using a technology-enabled citizen science approach, citizens are trained to identify, report and classify deceptive designs, creating a comprehensive database of their prevalence. A browser plugin will be developed to warn users of such designs and thus strengthen their digital sovereignty.

Before that, she lead the Privacy Buddy project and was involved in, among other things, projects exploring the interaction of safety (operational safety) and security (attack security) arising from networking in a smart city (Mission SecUrban) and on the development of a human-machine interface in autonomous vehicles (CRISP-SaL4).

She completed her PhD at the Institute of Psychology under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Vogt in March 2020. The dissertation is entitled ““I wonder how, I wonder why”: Supporting users in protecting their digital privacy by increasing risk awareness and knowledge as well as addressing protection obstacles”.

Dr. Nina Gerber already worked as a Scientific Staff Member in the research group Work and Engineering Psychology at the Institute of Psychology at TU Darmstadt from April 2015 to October 2017. In cooperation with the Department of Computer Science, she worked on the BMBF-funded project “MoPPa – Modeling the Privacy Paradox from a Technical and Psychological Perspective” (“MoPPa – Modellierung des Privacy-Paradoxons aus technischer und psychologischer Sicht”) on how users deal with privacy-critical data in the context of technology. In another cooperative project with the Department of Computer Science and Fraunhofer SIT within the framework of the “Center for Research in Security and Privacy” (CRISP, today: ATHENE), she conducted research on user acceptance and security perception of different authentication methods and participated in the development of a user-friendly interface that enables end users to communicate with each other confidentially and authentically by using encrypted e-mails.

Between November 2017 and March 2018, she initially supported the GRK 2050 – Privacy and Trust for Mobile Users as a Scientific Staff Member in the Department of Computer Science at TU Darmstadt and then moved to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) as part of a relocation of the entire research group. There, from April 2018 to September 2019, she worked at the Institute for Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods (AIFB) on, among other things, the EU-funded project GHOST, which aims to develop a user-friendly solution for controlling privacy settings in smart home environments.

Editorships

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Conference Proceedings

  • Häring, M., Tiefenau, E., Tiefenau, C., Kretschmer,F., Stöver, A. & Gerber, N. (2025). I Have Not Understood but Agree: Studying Informed Consent in the Context of the German COVID-19 Contact Tracing App. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact (TOCHI). Just Accepted (February 2025). doi:10.1145/3716380
  • Hahn, S., Al-Amrani, N., Allagah, S., Huang, H. R., Kircher, E., Rehs, C., Vogt, J., Marky, K. & Gerber, N. (2024). How to Respect Bystanders' Privacy in Smart Homes – A Co-Creation Study. In: Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI '24), ACM, doi:10.1145/3679318.3685340
  • Gerber, N., Stöver, A., & Mayer, P. (2024). Of Mothers and Managers – The Effect of Videos Depicting Gender Stereotypes on Women and Men in the Security and Privacy Field. In: Proceedings of the Twentieth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2024), USENIX.
  • Marky, K., Gerber, N., Krumb, H. J., Khamis, M., & Mühlhäuser, M. (2024). Investigating Voter Perceptions of Printed Physical Audit Trails for Online Voting. In: Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), 136-136, IEEE Computer Society.
  • Grassl, P. , Gerber, N. , & von Grafenstein, M. (2024). How Effectively Do Consent Notices Inform Users About the Risks to Their Fundamental Rights? European Data Protection Law Review 10(1), 96-104, doi:10.21552/edpl/2024/1/14
  • Stöver, A., Hahn, S., Althaus, S., Zimmer, E., & Gerber, N. (2024). Wie stellen sich Nutzende ihren Privatsphäre-Assistenten vor?. Datenschutz und Datensicherheit, 48, 633-636, doi:10.1007/s11623-024-1991-1
  • Tretter, S., Diefenbach, S., Ullrich, D. & Gerber, N., (2023). Branchenreport UX/Usability 2023. In: Mensch und Computer 2023 – Usability Professionals, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.. doi:10.18420/muc2023-up-517
  • Zimmermann, V.; Haunschild, J.; Stöver, A.; Gerber, N. (2023): Safe AND Secure Infrastructures? – Studying Human Aspects of Safety and Security Incidents with Experts from both Domains. Mensch und Computer 2023 – Workshopband. DOI: 10.18420/muc2023-mci-ws01-225. GI. MCI-WS01: 10. Workshop Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion in sicherheitskritischen Systemen. Rapperswil. 3.-6. September 2023
  • Nina Gerber, Alina Stöver, Justin Peschke, and Verena Zimmermann. 2023. Don’t accept all and continue: Exploring nudges for more deliberate interaction with tracking consent notices. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. Just Accepted (August 2023). https://doi.org/10.1145/3617363
  • Vogt, J., Keil, U., Cornel, C., Gerber, N. & Ferreira, Y. (2023). Psychotechnik, human factors, engineering psychology. Technikpsychologie—100 years of interdisciplinary cooperation between engineering and human sciences. Zeitschrift für Arbeitswissenschaft, 77, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41449-023-00353-x
  • Dressler, A., Gerber, N., Menig, A., Pasnicu, O., Stöver, A. & Vogt, J. (2023). Current topics of interdisciplinary cooperation between engineering and human sciences. Zeitschrift für Arbeitswissenschaft, 77, 7-22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41449-023-00352-y
  • Schürmann, T., Gerber, N. & Gerber, P. (2020). Benefits of formalized computational modeling for understanding user behavior in online privacy research. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 21(3), pp. 431-458, https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-05-2019-0126
  • Zimmermann, V. & Gerber, N. (2020). The password is dead, long live the password – A laboratory study on user perceptions of authentication schemes. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS), 133, 26-44, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.08.006
  • Kulyk, O., Gerber, N., Hilt, A. & Volkamer, M. (2020). Has the GDPR hype affected users’ reaction to cookie disclaimers? Journal of Cybersecurity, 6(1), https://doi.org/10.1093/cybsec/tyaa022
  • Kulyk, O., Reinheimer, B., Aldag, L., Mayer, P., Gerber, N. & Volkamer, M. (2020). Security and Privacy Awareness in Smart Environments -A Cross-Country Investigation. In: International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, 84-101, Springer, Cham.
  • Gerber, N., Reinheimer, B. & Volkamer, M. (2019). Investigating People’s Privacy Risk Perception. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, De Gruyter.
  • Gerber, N., Zimmermann, V. & Volkamer, M. (2019). Why Johnny Fails to Protect his Privacy. In: Proceedings of the 4th European Workshop on Usable Security (EuroUSEC), Internet Society.
  • Mayer, P., Gerber, N., Reinheimer, B., Rack, P., Braun, K. & Volkamer, M. (2019). I (don’t) see what you typed there! Shoulder-surfing resistant password entry on gamepads. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), ACM. doi:10.1145/3290605.3300779
  • Zimmermann, S. & Gerber, N. (2019). Why Do People Use Digital Applications? A Qualitative Analysis of Usage Goals and Psychological Need Fulfillment. i-com, 18(3), 271-285.
  • Brendel, J. & Gerber, N. (2019). Sichere Instant Messaging Apps. Datenschutz und Datensicherheit, 43(5), 276–280. doi: 10.1007/s11623-019-1107-5
  • Zimmermann, V., Gerber, N., Mayer, P., Kleboth, M., von Preuschen, A. & Schmidt, K. (2019). Keep on rating – on the systematic rating and comparison of authentication schemes. Information and Computer Security.
  • Kulyk, O., Gerber, N., Hilt, A. & Volkamer, M. (2018). Wahrnehmungen und Reaktionen der Endnutzer auf Cookie-Meldungen: “Diese Webseite verwendet Cookies”. Datenschutz und Datensicherheit, 43(2), 81–85. doi: 10.1007/s11623-019-1068-8
  • Gerber, N., Gerber, P. & Volkamer, M. (2018). Explaining the privacy paradox : A systematic review of literature investigating privacy attitude and behavior. Computers & Security, 77, 226–261. doi: 10.1016/j.cose.2018.04.002
  • Gerber, N., Reinheimer, B. & Volkamer, M. (2018). Home Sweet Home? Investigating Users’ Awareness of Smart Home Privacy Threats. In: Proceedings of An Interactive Workshop on the Human aspects of Smarthome Security and Privacy (WSSP, SOUPS 2018 Workshop), USENIX Association.
  • Kulyk, O., Hilt, A., Gerber, N. & Volkamer, M. (2018). This Website Uses Cookies“: Users’ Perceptions and Reactions to the Cookie Disclaimer. In: Proceedings of the 3rd European Workshop on Usable Security (EuroUSEC), Internet Society.
  • Gerber, N., Zimmermann, V., Henhapl, B., Emeröz, S. & Volkamer, M. (2018). Finally Johnny Can Encrypt. But Does This Make Him Feel More Secure? In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2018), ACM. doi:10.1145/3230833.3230859
  • Karegar, F., Gerber, N., Volkamer, M. & Fischer-Hübner, S. (2018). Helping John to Make Informed Decisions on Using Social Login. In: Proceedings of the 33th Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2018), ACM.
  • Gerber, N., Zimmermann, V., Henhapl, B., Emeröz, S., Volkamer, M., & Hilt, T. (2018). Nutzerwahrnehmung der Ende-zu-Ende-Verschlüsselung in WhatsApp. Datenschutz und Datensicherheit, 42(11), 680-685.
  • Zimmermann, V., Gerber, N., Kleboth, M, von Preuschen, A., Schmidt, K. & Mayer, P. (2018). The Quest to Replace Passwords Revisited – Rating Authentication Schemes. In: HAISA 2018.
  • Marky, K., Mayer, P., Gerber, N. & Zimmermann, V. (2018). Assistance in Daily Password Generation Tasks. In: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International Joint Conference and 2018 International Symposium.
  • Ghiglieri, M., Henhapl, B. & Gerber, N. (2018). Evaluation der Nutzbarkeit von PGP und S/MIME in Thunderbird. In: 4. Usable Security und Privacy Workshop (Mensch und Computer 2018).
  • Gerber, N., Gerber, P., Drews, H., Kirchner, E., Schlegel, N., Schmidt, T. & Scholz, L. (2017). FoxIT: Enhancing Mobile Users' Privacy Behavior by Increasing Knowledge and Awareness. In: Workshop on Socio-Technical Aspects in Security and Trust (STAST).
  • Zimmermann, V., Henhapl, B., Gerber, N. & Enzmann, M. (2017). Promoting secure Email communication and authentication. In: Burghardt, M., Wimmer, R., Wolff, C. & Womser-Hacker, C. (Hrsg.), Mensch und Computer 2017 – Workshopband. Regensburg: Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.
  • Gerber, N. & Zimmermann, V. (2017). Security vs. privacy? User preferences regarding text passwords and biometric authentication. In: Burghardt, M., Wimmer, R., Wolff, C. & Womser-Hacker, C. (Hrsg.), Mensch und Computer 2017 – Workshopband. Regensburg: Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.
  • Tretter, S., Diefenbach, S., Ullrich, D. & Gerber, N. (2017). Branchenreport UX/Usability 2017. In: Mensch und Computer 2017 – Usability Professionals, Vol. 61.
  • Gerber, N., Gerber, P. & Hernando, M. (2017). Sharing the ‘Real Me’ – How Usage Motivation and Personality Relate to Privacy Protection Behavior on Facebook. In: Proceedings of HCII2017.
  • Zimmermann, V. & Gerber, N. (2017). “If it wasn’t secure, they would not use it in the movies” Security Perceptions and User Acceptance of Authentication Technologies. In: Proceedings of HCII2017.
  • Mayer, P., Gerber, N., McDermott, R., Volkamer, M. & Vogt, J. (2017). Productivity vs security: mitigating conflicting goals in organizations. Information & Computer Security, 25(2), pp.137-151, https://doi.org/10.1108/ICS-03-2017-0014
  • Gerber, P., Volkamer, M., Gerber, N. (2017). Das Privacy-Paradoxon – Ein Erklärungsversuch und Handlungsempfehlungen. In: Deutscher Dialogmarketing Verband e.V (Hrsg.), Tagungsband 11. wissenschaftlicher interdisziplinärer Kongress für Dialogmarketing. Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler.
  • Gerber, N., McDermott, R., Volkamer, M. & Vogt, J. (2016). Understanding information security compliance – Why goal setting and rewards might be a bad idea. In: Clarke, N. L. & Furnell, S. M. (Hrsg.), Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium on Human Aspects of Information Security & Assurance (HAISA 2016). United Kingdom: Plymouth University. (S. 145-155).
  • Gerber, N. (2016). Let’s get physical: Lässt sich User Experience physiologisch erfassen?. In: Prinz, W., Borchers, J. & Jarke, M. (Hrsg.), Mensch und Computer 2016 – Tagungsband. Aachen: Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.
  • Tretter, S., Diefenbach, S., Ullrich, D. & Gerber, N. (2016). Branchenreport UX/Usability 2016 – Ergebnisse der jährlichen Befragung unter UX/Usability Professionals in Deutschland. In: Hess, S. & Fischer, H. (Hrsg.), UP 2016. Aachen: Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. und die German UPA e.V.
  • Kolb, N., Diefenbach, S. & Niklas, S., (2015). 3, 2, 1, meins! Analyse der Nutzerziele beim Onlineshopping mittels der ”Mental Model Diagramm"-Methode. In: Endmann, A., Fischer, H. & Krökel, M. (Hrsg.), Mensch und Computer 2015 – Usability Professionals. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg. (S. 113-122).
  • Diefenbach, S., Tretter, S., Ullrich, D. & Kolb, N., (2015). Branchenreport UX/Usability 2015. In: Endmann, A., Fischer, H. & Krökel, M. (Hrsg.), Mensch und Computer 2015 – Usability Professionals. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg. (S. 7-20).
  • Diefenbach, S., Kolb, N. & Hassenzahl, M. (2014). The 'Hedonic' in Human-Computer Interaction – History, Contributions, and Future Research Directions. DIS 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive System, 305-314.
  • Kolb, N., Bartsch, S., Volkamer, M. & Vogt, J. (2014). Capturing Attention for Warnings about Insecure Password Fields – Systematic Development of a Passive Security Intervention. In Proceedings of HCI, (24), 172-182.
  • Kolb, N., Diefenbach, S. & Ullrich, D. (2014). Berichte aus der Usability/UX Branche: Ausbildungswege, Arbeitsfeld und aktuelle Diskussionen. i-com Zeitschrift für interaktive und kooperative Medien, 13(1), 82-87.
  • Diefenbach, S., Kolb, N. & Ullrich, D. (2013). Branchenreport UX/Usability 2013. In Brau, H.; Lehmann, A.; Petrovic, K.; Schroeder, M. (Hrsg.), Usability Professionals 2013, 264-273.
  • Diefenbach, S., Ullrich, D. & Kolb, N. (2012). Branchenreport Usability 2012. In: Brau, H.; Lehmann, A.; Petrovic, K.; Schroeder, M. (Hrsg.), Usability Professionals 2012, 288-294.
  • Stöver, A., Gerber, N., Pridöhl, H., Maass, M., Bretthauer, S., Hollick, M., & Herrmann, D. (2023). How Website Owners Face Privacy Issues: Thematic Analysis of Responses from a Covert Notification Study Reveals Diverse Circumstances and Challenges. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2, 251-264.
  • Stöver, A., Hahn, S., Kretschmer, F., & Gerber, N. (2023). Investigating How Users Imagine Their Personal Privacy Assistant. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2, 384-402.
  • Gerber, N., Stöver, A. (2023). From the Privacy Calculus to Crossing the Rubicon: An Introduction to Theoretical Models of User Privacy Behavior. In: Gerber, N., Stöver, A., Marky, K. (eds) Human Factors in Privacy Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28643-8_2
2024 – today ATHENE PI, Leader PIPS Lab
2020 – today Scientific staff member in the research group of Work and Engineering Psychology (FAI) at the TU Darmstadt
2020 PhD in Human Sciences at the TU Darmstadt, title of the dissertation: “I wonder how, I wonder why: Supporting users in protecting their digital privacy by increasing risk awareness and knowledge as well as addressing protection obstacles”
2018 – 2019 Scientific staff member at SECUSO at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
2017 – 2018 Scientific staff member at SECUSO at the TU Darmstadt within the GRK 2050 – Privacy and Trust for mobile users
2015 – 2017 Scientific staff member in the research group of Work and Engineering Psychology (FAI) at the TU Darmstadt
2014 Internship at eResult GmbH in the area of usability testing
2012 – 2015 Student assistant at the Department of Ergonomics at the Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen, in the fields of product design, aesthetics of interaction, experience design
2011 Education as a team facilitator for interdisciplinary project teams under the direction of the University Didactic Center of the TU Darmstadt
2010 – 2015 Student assistant in the research group for Industrial and Engineering Psychology at the Institute of Psychology in the fields of HCI, transformational products, intuitive product use
2009 – 2012 Study of Psychology at the TU Darmstadt (B.Sc.), title of the bachelor thesis: “Reden ist Silber, Schweigen ist Gold? Relationship between verbalizability and intuition in the context of interaction with products”.
2009 Abitur