Bio
Florian Alexander Schmidt, born 1979, is a researcher, journalist and designer from Berlin. He is currently finishing his PhD at the Royal College of Art in London. His thesis is an investigation into the methods of crowdsourcing in the design industry and a critique of how crowdsourcing platforms are designed. Schmidt holds a diploma in communication design from the Berlin School of Arts Weissensee and has worked as a freelance designer for many years. Parallel to his practical design work, he has written for magazines such as eye, form, design report and bauhaus. He is the author of the award winning book Parallel Realitäten (Niggli 2006), on the design of virtual worlds, co-author of the book Kritische Masse (form+zweck 2010), on amateurism in design and co-author as well as translator of the book Crowd Work (Bund Verlag 2014), published by the IGM, Germany’s largest trade union.