Designing Systems

You can say my work requires me to design with a programmer’s mindset: to create inventories of composable and interchangeable parts which form a greater system. This systematic approach to UI design is my core strength – I connect designers and developers. This usually results in better performance of both the product and the team. Improved communication, streamlined workflows, less code, visual and structural consistency – these are benefits for your product’s users and creators.

Teaching & Consulting

I held several in-house workshops at design and development companies. Since 2013 I am teaching a four-semester course on Interaction Design with emphasis on Human Centered Design and Psychology for Designers at the Berlin-based School for Games. In 2016/17 I taught programming with Scratch to younger kids (age 8–12) at Haba Digitalwerkstatt.

Current Position

Working as a freelance design consultant under the company name Sudo, I help client-side teams of designers and developers to create and maintain robust and scalable UI design systems.

Work Experience

My last position was team lead at Yoshino — a Berlin-based company specialized in digital product development and design for health care related brands. In 2017/18 I was asked to build and lead their small crossfunctional team of developers and designers. On a typical day, you could find me switching between art direction, UX design, team management, frontend development and occasionally running performance reviews or job interviews.

Before Yoshino, I was working freelance . My jobs varied between design- and frontend-development gigs. Among my clients were mostly large agencies but also Berlin-based startups. I was involved in projects for companies and brands like Volkswagen, BMW, MTV Networks, EMI Music, German and Swiss Television Channels (ARD, ZDF, Pro7, Sat1, SF), Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, eBay … and possibly more. However I dicovered that working for smaller clients usually came with more resposibility and impact on the overall project. I must say I mostly preferred that.

Skills

• Experienced teacher and mentor
• Confident and enthusiastic speaker/presenter
• Skilled team lead, experienced with hiring, performance reviews, recource management, strategic planning, motivation tactics, etc.
• Experienced with creating and running workshops based on Design Thinking or Design Sprint priciples
• Deep knowledge of User-Centered Design, strong supporter of Accessability and Inclusive Design principles
• Usability advocat, focus on excellent User Experience (UX)
• Frontend Development veteran since the late 1990’s, fluent in HTML, CSS, JavaScript
• Good knowledge of programming concepts, able to get stuff done in many languages, eg. PHP, C, BASH, …
• Pedantic eye for clean, well-executed typography and layout
• Focussed on designing component-based systems (with or without frameworks like Vue or React)
• Proficient with all kinds of modern frontend tooling, transpilers, frameworks, etc. like LESS/SASS, npm/yarn, Webpack, Babel, PostCSS … and what not
• In-depth knowledge of professional layout/design software like Sketch, Photoshop, Illustrator etc.
• Solid knowledge of print design
• Always learning new stuff

Languages

My first language is German. I am fluent in speaking and writing English. Mon Français est nul.

Education

I hold a diploma in design (2006, University of Applied Sciences, Germany) and I am a certified teacher for adult education (2017, AZAV, Germany).