Category: Thoughts

Two years ago, my design team and I set out to tackle the challenge of merging two established products in the complex space of crypto key management. During this time, we not only cared for an excellent interface design, but through our workshop facilitation and collaborative problem solving, we led the product team to a future-proof concept and unified mental model.

As evidence of our impact, I am proud to say that we recently won a Red Dot Award: Brands & Communication Design 2023 for the interface design of this product, the Unified Key Orchestrator (UKO).

In a good user experience nothing is left to chance. Things are offered to the user in the right place and at the right moment.

In a good user experience everything that is there has a purpose. Everything else is not there.

Way too many applications feature only final screens, often rotated or distorted to fit into a fancy mockup. That’s good stuff to make a first impression, maybe.

Recently I heard a fellow designer talking about design being a team sport. Just today I found the exact same theme in “The State of UX in 2020”. Yet, this is not a cool coincidence underlining a trend. Good design has always been and will always be a team sport. Law of nature.

I can tell from first-hand experience, I worked both ways: 10 years as a poorly connected freelancer, doing everything on my own with little to no feedback from other designers. And 4 years at IBM with radical collaboration, lots of possibilities for feedback and exchange, and our design team’s own Definition of Done saying “Critiques until the design team is happy”.