2018-05 - today: Creating a Conference Experience

Customer: On Request (my personal project)

Tasks:

The project:

I always dreamed about creating my own product so together with my husband I founded a company that enabled us to bring our own technology conference to life: The Think About! Conference® in Cologne, Germany. Think About! is an annual two-day community event about technology, design and their impacts on society. Two days, 24 talks, three tracks and around 200 participants.

My contribution:

We started the project by doing extensive research about technology conferences. After that we worked on our elevator pitch which focused on our personal values that we wanted to put into the conference. We then build a very simple MVP website and asked a lot of people what they thought about our idea and our conference concept. After validating our hypothesis, I start[1]ed to create a strong and unique design for the brand. At the same time, we started finding a location, speak[1]er and service provider. We started at a point where no one knew that our product existed and managed to create a successful event with almost 200 attendees in less than a year. We collected a lot of feedback from our attendees which was overwhelm[1]ingly positive. Since September 2022, we have again been holding regular smaller meetups in Cologne and hope that we will be able to launch the next big Think About! Conference® in 2023 or 2024.

Design process:

After a scribble session, I designed the website beginning with the first sketches on paper to the finished layout - the developer was included in every step.

2020? 2022: Creating an innovative streaming platform

Tasks:

I was tasked with establishing a human-centered design process within a cross-functional remote team. This was to help transform the business model from an old, dusty DVD store to a new video-on-demand platform with a great and contemporary user experience.

The approach:

Over a period of two years, I succeeded in dissolving design as a silo discipline within the software team with the help of various design thinking methods. I achieved this by regularly pairing the different disciplines, involving devs in regular usability testing, design sprints, collaborative design sessions, and much more. With the help of these and other methodologies, we as a team succeeded in gradually transforming the old DVD store system into a contemporary online platform and solving real user problems.

My contribution:

Together with a colleague, I established and managed the UX area at the client. We succeeded in establishing the Double Diamond method for each new feature in close collaborative cooperation with the entire team. In addition, I was responsible for the entire interaction design and built a component library together with the developers, so that new page types could be developed easily.

Workshop Facilitation:

Excerpt from one of the many workshops I have planned and facilitated. Together with 8 participants, we solved a concrete product problem with various design thinking methods.

2017? 2021: The Sales Experience of the Future

Customer: Daimler

Tasks:

The challenge:

We were asked to help Daimler design the future sales experience for their sales people in the Daimler car dealerships in Germany. As a result from user research, we found out that the sales people were using an old and complex system which required them to stay at their desks while being in the sales process with a customer. Additionally, the old system was com[1]plex, confusing and time-consuming which did result in a painful and long sales process for the sales people. Research also showed that spend[1]ing as much time as possible with the end-customer resulted in more satis[1]fied customers. So the question we wanted to answer was: What tools could we arm sales people with to provide the sales ex[1]perience of the future?

The solution:

We developed a digital service platform that is available for desktop as well as for iPads. Not only can sales people move around in the dealership showing cars to their customers, they also have an iPad with them to demonstrate the features of the cars as well as configure an individual car right away. All in all, the solution is easy-to-use, which leads to a less time-consuming sales process and happier end-customers.

My contribution:

I worked in a cross-functional team as well as being part of the four-person UX community within the project. I build a living style guide, conducted user interviews and was responsible for interaction- and visual design.

Sales platform:

With the help of the iPad sales people can move freely in the dealership, showing additional car features to end customers and configuring a car together. The sales process will then typically be finished at a desktop computer where sales people can enter relevant data for the final contract.

Style guide:

When I joined the project I suggested building a living style guide as four teams were working on the same product for over a year, and it had quite some inconsisten[1]cies at that time. Together with a pair of developers I designed this fully functional style guide which resulted in minimizing design debt, increasing the team?s velocity and satisfying our client. I later one used the project?s mascot, the styleotter, to send out style guide updates to all four teams whenever new components were introduces.

Design process:

For my team, I led design process on features from research, through ideation and wire framing to implementation. I paired with the developers and product people daily to iterate on designs after user research. I facilitated collaborative scribble sessions with the entire team to ideate on new features.

2019 ? 2019: Design Sprint for a German energy producer

Task:

ThoughtWorks was asked by a German energy producer to conduct a design sprint. However, the customer wanted a shortened version of the sprint to 3 days. Performing this sprint in a shortened version required excellent preparation and plenty of creativity.

The approach:

Since the sprint was shortened, my colleague and I conducted dozens of interviews with stakeholders in advance to ensure that the sprint challenge could be viewed and discussed from different areas of expertise in ad[1]vance. It was only through this meticulous groundwork that we were able to successfully execute this sprint within 3 days. We chose the following format: Understand Problem & Generate Ideas (Day 1), Storyboard & Create Prototype (Day 2) and Test Prototype (Day 3).