Every team, company and project is unique. There is no one-size-fits-all UX approach. Therefore, in order to help our clients achieve outstanding user experience, we consult on 3 levels: strategic, tactical and operational.

We create custom strategies for a wide range of industries with the goal of establishing a human-centred way of working within a company. From companies to start-ups and large corporations, we deal with organizations that face very different challenges. However, the goal is always the same: To build a sustainable business with great products. And the best way to achieve this nowadays is to offer an outstanding customer experience. In order to maintain this focus, it is crucial to integrate a customer-centered mindset into every aspect of a company. However, the organizational challenges vary, depending on the company’s culture and its type of business. This is why we tackle UX on three different levels, whether it be in a new, existing or growing business setting.

The strategic level deals with assessing the specific parameters of a company environment in order to establish UX. We have to take into account factors such as company size and working culture to establish a solid UX plan. For example, in the context of start-ups, it is possible to establish a user-centred or human-centred way of working within the company from the very beginning. The challenge for start-ups is to keep a user-centered focus as the business grows. The challenges grow as organizations become more complex. In fact, the risk of falling behind in the race for best-possible customer experience is greatest for large, established multinational corporations. This is especially true of the ones who deal with projects at an enterprise level (B2E), with other businesses (B2B) and directly with consumers (B2C).

One of our partners, Kursta Ozenc, has established a solution to one of the hardest challenges: changing a company’s culture. Ozenc works at the Ritual Design Lab, a design and research initiative at Stanford d.school. His approach to this problem is outlined in his publication “Rituals for Work”. Ozenc’s ground-breaking method consists of integrating the know-how and functionality of rituals into design work. He actually suggests using rituals as a “tool” to design improved processes in a work culture. For example, he suggests “designing” the way a new project starts within an organization with use of rituals. This increases employee engagement, team performance, and shared purpose within organizations.
→ “Rituals for Work” by Kursat Ozenc, Ph.D. and Margaret Hagan, Ph.D.

The following example describes a phased approach to increase the ROI of UX and the level of maturity of Human-Centered Design within a large organization, the adidas Group.
→ “Institutionalization of Human-Centered Design at adidas Group” by Leo Glomann and Lucie Grudno

We use agile development methodologies like Scrum to implement software within digital project settings. Approaches like Design Thinking or Human-Centered Design are mindsets or ways of working on a conceptual level. There are many ways to make these approaches work on a practical level too but a very common challenge amongst digital teams is the integration of agile development and UX approaches.

Once again, there’s no one-size fits all. Some see “UX” as conceptual pre-work, prior to any development efforts. This, by definition, is not agile because there is little leeway for change during the development process. Others approach UX as a service, meaning the UX personnel is not an integral part of the Scrum team. This goes against the Scrum philosophy and typically results in additional efforts in communication and alignment. The common advice is that UX representatives should be equal Scrum team members and actively participate in Scrum ceremonies. Although the benefit of this is indisputable, it does not solve the actual issue. How might agile development and UX efforts work pragmatically hand-in-hand throughout the complete process? This question is answered by our model called “Human-Centered Agile Workflow” (HCAW). It is coined as process model for true integration of customer-centered conception and agile development.
→ “Introducing ‘Human-Centered Agile Workflow’ (HCAW) – An Agile Conception and Development Process Model” by Leo Glomann for LINC

Everything starts and ends with the user. The user decides whether a new or updated digital experience is accepted. From easy onboarding until proactive recommendation of the experienced system, the user gauges the success of a project, product and company. We analyse the context and tasks of users throughout the journey in order to understand their true, implicit needs. The aim is to uncover meaningful, surprising and actionable insights. There is a vast toolset from which we pick the most suitable for each project. Here are a few of our favourites:

Anything can be tested from a user’s perspective – whether it be a design prototype, an early implementation or product iteration. We always conduct user evaluations with actual users as you cannot perform validated learning too early on. Qualitative evaluations, like task-based Usability Tests or contextual UX Tests are amongst our favorites. In many cases, we accompany them with quantitative studies, such as standardized usability or UX questionnaires or custom quantitative surveys.

Here is an example for a specifically tailored evaluation to identify gender differences in technology adoption of retail self-services.
→ “Assessing the influence of gender towards the adoption of technology-enabled self-service systems in retail environments” by Prof. Dr. Christian Zagel, Dr. Jochen Süßmuth and Leo Glomann

Our core principle is to see user research as an integral part of an interdisciplinary team and not as a separate activity. Apart from our researchers, our designers and consultants play an important role during preparation, conduction and analysis of user research.

For further reading about this topic from an academic point-of-view, here’s an outline how we see an integration of informatics, psychology, business and design faculties with regards to Human-Centered Design:
→ “Human-Centered Design Curriculum for Multidisciplinary Application at Design Faculties” by Leo Glomann for Technische Hochschule Nürnberg

We are working on our own digital solution in the fields of Machine Learning, Cognitive Computing, Behavioral Science and User Research. It is currently in its research and development phase.
→ “User Research through Artificial Intelligence” by Sarra Zaghdoudi and Leo Glomann (work in progress – stay tuned)

For us, design means to create. Understanding the user, their context and tasks throughout their journey is our baseline for ideating solutions. This helps us predict “to-be scenarios” or user flows of the envisaged experience. We can then determine its structural logic and the information architecture. These activities are integrated with accompanying user research and evaluation during the design and development process. By constantly creating new iterations, we create optimal interaction solutions, maintaining a consistent focus on the user.

Visualising future scenarios in user flows is a highly efficient communication tool across teams and stakeholders. We start from high-level flows, and from iteration to iteration, define more and more detailed interaction steps. Depending on the digital system in question, information architecture diagrams are a more suitable way to communicate interlinks and relationships between information clusters.

As an example from one of our projects, we’ve interactively made use of user flows to foster team co-creation and to specify the solution’s interaction:
→ “Patient-Centered Design of an e-Mental Health App” by Leo Glomann, Viktoria Hager, Dr. Christian A. Lukas, Prof. Dr. Matthias Berking

Our solutions come in many forms. Whether it involves VR, AR, voice interaction or common graphic user interfaces, we can prototype a design solution. For graphic UI design, we love creating Design Systems (i.e. Atomic Design) while simultaneously considering non-verbal communication such as Microanimations and transitions.

We are currently researching and developing prototypes for Augmented Reality applications. → “AR Operating System Experience” (work in progress – stay tuned)