Introspectively

A little bit about myself

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A BIT ABOUT MYSELF.

I’m an Interaction Designer, storyteller, and creative catalyst with a BA in Interface Design and 10+ years of experience in HCI design.

Raised in Berlin, Germany, I currently live and work in the California Bay Area for RingCentral.

Over the course of my career I both contributed to, and led the design of user experiences and visual aesthetics for multiple services, applications, and organizational initiatives.

Today I am leading the developer and app marketplace experience at RingCentral, spanning the end-to-end experience for customers, developers and company-internal administrators.

Before that I ran a cross-continental design team (Bay Area - Berlin - Mumbai) for HERE Technologies, focused on internal location data production applications and external location based services.

When not working, I travel around the country and enjoy movies, series, and all sorts of games. I occasionally play the Ukulele (poorly), the Guitar (even worse), and dream about owning my own ice cream parlor.

My 5 on design

I believe and support the “good instincts”, the “stroke of genius”, and “happy accidents”; if something feels right - pursue it.

However, I do think that in order to be consistently successful in ideating, launching and maintaining good products, it’s imperative to

  1. truly understand the “need” behind the “want”;

  2. have the tool set to bring stakeholders and engineers on the same page;

  3. translate learnings into satisfying user experiences;

  4. constantly jump between the macro and micro level; and

  5. never be afraid to learn and adapt your thinking.

 
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Work experience

  • RingCentral • Belmont, CA • USA
    Principal Product Designer • 2020 – present

    • I am responsible for the business verticals “app integrations” and “app marketplace”, web and in-product. I work closely with product managers and directors to craft the end-to-end experience from long-term, user research-informed vision to micro-interaction level, and build strategic partnerships with marketing, sales and product to successfully and continuously ship products.

    • I helped create a flexible, internal CMS as part of the app marketplace’s transformation from a static web page into a dynamic, editorial driven experience.

    • I worked with the user research team to create a “rapid research test kit” that empowers designers to conduct their own research by accelerating the planning, analysis and reporting of various studies.

    • Part of my time I dedicate to mentoring young design talents at the company, with a focus on improving their storytelling skills, eye for detail and self-worth as a designer.

  • HERE North America • Berkeley, CA • USA
    Principal Design Lead • 2015 – 2020

    • As initiator and lead of the West Coast Design Studio I provided guidance and support for sales, engineering and product teams at HERE California, and helped bring in large-scale customers such as Amazon or Facebook.

    • I successfully grew and managed a small team of UX designers and researchers in the US and India, and worked with them to craft a component-based, modular suite of 15+ internal and external map creation and machine learning tools that support the vision of automated driving experiences.

    • I was responsible for redesigning the in-car– and fleet management tools for the company’s global map data collection process. I collaborated with program managers and other stakeholders to introduce design thinking practices into an engineering-driven part of the organization.

    • I took initiative and created a set of guidelines to improve the company’s UI iconography, and used it to design 1000+ icons, which found their way into many products across the company’s portfolio.

  • HERE Deutschland GmbH • Berlin • Germany
    Sr Interaction Designer • 2011 – 2015

    • I conducted user research and lead the user experience design of one of the first turn-by-turn pedestrian navigation smartwatch app “HERE for Samsung Gear S”. I continued to provide guidance and support for subsequent releases.

    • I designed and shipped the navigation app “HERE Maps” for the Nokia Asha 501, an entry-level smartphone aimed at emerging markets. I worked closely with product owner and engineering to build and release this product within a 6-month time frame, and managed stakeholders from Nokia and HERE in an successful effort to align design principles and patterns.

    • I set up design patterns and guidelines for user conversion and first-time usage experiences, and guided design peers to adapt them in consumer products.

  • Deutsche Telekom Laboratories • Berlin • Germany
    User Experience Designer • 2010 – 2011

    • I designed a point-of-sale tablet experience that allowed sales prospects to customize their mobile plan, conducted user research and supported the development of multiple early stage prototypes.

    • Embedded in the innovation team, I worked on visualizing concepts using storytelling devices such as illustration, animation and video editing.