Design and User Experience
The strong focus on design and UX is a great advantage for the market success of products and services of companies from Berlin.
User experience and usability are increasingly perceived as success factors for companies. Products that are characterized by good usability and a positive user experience increase effectiveness and efficiency and lead to happier and more productive users and customers or employees.
In security-critical applications, such as in control rooms or with medical devices, good usability is mandated by law.
The industry is characterised by:
- interdisciplinarity
- agile methods
- basis for new IT products, services, and applications
- UUX as key factor to success and as USP against competitors
- enormous growth potential, also for adjacent industries
Business and application fields
UX service providers are characterized by a high level of problem-solving skills, including flexible and agile familiarization with application fields. They understand how to analyze existing solutions and facilitate innovation processes. They are therefore an ideal partner for product development processes, especially where digitalization is creating new business models or transforming existing solutions. Their focus is on future users. Their satisfaction is always the focus of development and products are created that survive on the market.
The range of their services includes:
- Generation of ideas by means of design thinking
- Cognitive psychological consulting and surveys
- Needs and market analysis
- Prototyping and UX testing
- Development of interactive software or haptic products
- Success measurement through UX methodology
With its numerous service providers for user experience testing and analysis, service design, software design and product and industrial design, the capital region is well positioned in this regard. Larger cluster players such as Amazon, AVM, Deutsche Telekom, eBay, HERE, SAP, Zalando, and many others have long maintained their own UUX departments in order to secure their market success.
Research and development in the area of design and usability
More than 3,000 students participate in a variety of design-orientated degree courses at the region's universities, training to become such things as usability engineers, interface designers, human factors specialists, interface architects, engineering psychologists, occupational scientists, and organisational and business psychologists. Thanks to the outstanding training opportunities in the region, there are many specialists qualified in the field of user experience available in the region.
- University of the Arts | Design Research Lab
- Technical University | Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics
- HTW Berlin University of Applied Sciences | UxLab Usabiliy Labor, Creative Computing
- Humboldt University Berlin | An-Institut Artop
- Hasso Plattner Institute | School of Design Thinking
- Potsdam University of Applied Sciences | Design Department
Innovative forms of human-computer interaction are being researched, for example, at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute.
Talents, community, and events
Creatives and designers love the inspiring environment in Berlin, which offers them space for experimentation. As a result, a very international community of freelancers, students, and employees has formed around UUX topics. Networks such as the International Design Center (IDZ) count over two hundred members focused on design, including companies, agencies, institutions, and creatives.
The many conferences, events, and informal meetings help connect UUX service providers with one another and provide good opportunities for potential clients to meet them. These networking formats help find cooperation partners to realise solutions and develop products jointly.
A small sample of these events:
