Growing up in Essen, Germany, I started my career as an intern at a TV production company in Cologne after high-school. Using the computer not only to consume, but to create and working in a creative environment had a strong impression on me.

I moved to Cologne permanently and started a 2 year apprenticeship as a Design-Technical Assistant to build a foundation of skills as a designer. Consisting of three main subjects, Graphic-, Motion- and Interaction Design, I found myself in deep fascination for the latter. From the Web Design Lessons to basics in Frontend Development, in the course of the two years, I started leaning more and more into that direction. A teacher introduced me to the Arduino Platform between the classes, and whenever I got bored, I spend my time creating visual experiments in the processing language. I used the two opportunities to choose courses from the computer science apprenticeship program to create an iOS App, where I learned to respect the Objective C Language and admire the Apple Human Interface Guidelines, and one year later do a Javascript Project, which made JS my programming language of choice ever since.

After I completed the apprenticeship, I moved to Berlin to work as a Front-End Intern at digital agency Die Taikonauten. Even though I consider the short time there as the most insightful so far, since I learned a lot from the environment and more experienced programmers, I found my creative enthusiasm unsatisfied after a while. Talking to a former coworker from another company I tried to formulate my targeted discipline from a term I saw frequently in articles that covered topics of my interest: Interface Design. I was hoping to find something like my apprenticeship for my studies, something that offered at least part of the courses to cover the design of interactive systems. He told me about the bachelor programme in Potsdam with an exclusive focus on Interface Design, flexible course topics every semester and project focused course structure.
Studying there for some years, my fascination and joy for the subject is still as strong as when I started. The modular course structure of my studies allowed me to choose from an ever-changing field of topics, here's an excerpt of the courses I chose to give you an idea of my focus:

- Basics Interface
- Designing Programms
- Digital Typography
- Entrepreneurship- & Management-Lab
- Generative Design
- Human Computer Interaction
- Lean UX
- Musical Interfaces
- Physical Interaction Design
- RE: UI UX
- UX & IX For Autonomous Driving
- Visual Interface Design

Interface Design, by definition, is the communication between human and machine. Both sides have their very own strengths and deficites that have to be taken into account when designing an Human-Computer Interface. Thus my focus lies on expanding knowledge in Psychology and Technology to be aware of the constraints. Yet, knowing about the constraints really opens up the playing-field to begin with. Within the playing-field it isn't about constraints anymore, it's about synergy. Strength of the one supports weaknesses of the other and vice versa.

There are three important components in my design process: Situations, Sampling and Feedback.

Situations:
Good design is fulfilling a need of a user. On quest to find that human need for certain groups of people, I found myself struggling with one decision: Do I focus a specific need, that might anticipate a obvious solution that solves a symptom, but not the underlying cause? Or do I focus on the general need, that is so vague, that it didn't give enough hints on potential solutions? I found my answer to these questions in the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework: Instead of focusing on a specific persona of a user, it focuses on the need a user has in a specific situation. To observe and imagine a certain situation is easier than trying to get into the skin of a certain persona that was made up, and pretend to think how they think. Situation based analysis is my cornerstone for determining the problem, that a design is about to solve.

Sampling:
I'm a huge fan of sampling. In my spare time, I find joy in digging through stacks of old vinyl records and make something new out of it. A little sidenote: The machines that I use to for it, SP-12, MPC-3000 and S900 are doing something, that I try to achieve with almost every interface that I'm constructing: They manage to disappear in the process. From a certain point on, I don't feel my hands interacting with a machine anymore. It's my brain interacting with the music. Making an interface invisible is not about reducing the elements on the machine, or in the application: It's about minimising the conscious thought I have to put into the interaction. But what role does sampling play in my design process? Building on existing conventions is crucial to create usable interfaces. But with sampling I don't mean just the use of Guidelines and Design Patterns, rather taking something from a different area like architecture, art, nature and other design disciplines to use it in another context to solve a problem. Everything is a remix.

Feedback:
Getting usable feedback and evaluating it correctly might be the most challenging aspect of human centred design to me. There are many external factors that can blur feedback to the point that it becomes insufficient or in the worst case misleading. Still, feedback remains the most important aspect. Getting an idea out as quickly by drawing and iterating rough wireframes and creating click-prototypes generates a constant stream of feedback which is indispensable for my workflow. Turns out my own brain is the most biased of them all. Labor leads to love, so I started to keep my drafts lo-fi for as long as possible in a project, to keep attachment and visceral details on a low. The less visceral attributes my designs featured, the better I was able to evaluate critical design decisions with team members, clients, fellow students and especially myself. I admire people, that can give constructive feedback based on rough prototypes.

Of course these thoughts are heavily influenced by people that inspired me over the years, from lectures to authors and pioneers of the (interaction) design field. I borrowed heavily from their knowledge, so I want to name a few: Frank Rausch & Timm Kekeritz, Boris Müller, Don Norman, Steve Krug, Bill Moggridge, Jeff Gothelf, Jake Knapp, Nir Eyal, Clayton Christensen, JJ Garrett and of course many others that I want to thank for sharing their knowledge.

Over the past 10+ years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with amazing teams in companies of all sizes, from engineering offices and startups with a handfull of people, scale-ups and midsize market companies, NGOs, to DAX listed companies with 50k+ employees.

My focus lays on solving complex software requirements with simple to use interfaces and optimizing for a satisfying user experience. My core services are UI Design, Design Systems, UX Research and Data Visualisation.

I'm always interested to learn about any UI/UX challenges, so if you could see a fit with my skillset, I'd love to hear from you.