Henning Grote   Premium Member

Since my first contact with Graphical User Interfaces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_System_Software_6 I have been intrigued with the design ergonomics of these interfaces - but that was well in my days at the university and I never thought I could work in that field. On a more practical side, I worked as a parttime copy writer and communication consultant in a small advertising agency in Berlin. Some of these works included outlining and writing Corporate Design Manuals for MetaDesign. All of this happened in the mid-nineties
 
1998 I got the chance to combine my private nerdish computer & internet interests with my conceptual-thinking and writing skills when I started working as an IA and Concept/Content Developer at KabelNewMedia, one of Germanys leading interactive agencies back then (before the new economy crash).
 
I started with KabelNewMedia in the Hamburg Offices, but moved to Munich 10 months later where I was tasked to build up and lead the IA (Concept Development) Team and head a Unit working for our Munich key account Siemens. In 2000 I had the chance to participate in an in-house seminar held by the St. Gallen Manegement Center on “Leading an result-oriented business unit” (six 3-day seminars). As a result, I was part of the team that revised our interal processes to better suit our reporting needs and established target-agreements as a HR tool.
Because my field of work lacks a name, that means the same to everyone, I have been called a content or concept developer, information architect, usability consultant or cross media consultant. The name that fits best describing my field of work in my eyes is User Experience.
 
User Experience encompasses every level of interactive projects. Starting on the strategic level, user needs and site objectives have to be defined. Functional specifications and content requirements are defined together with the developers. Information architecture and interaction design build the basis for the information design, interface design and navigational design, which is developed together with the graphical designer. All of these, combined with the overall visual design defines the user experience of webapplications. (source: Jesse James Garrett, The Elements of User Experience, http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf)
 
A few examples from my previous projects may help to clarify that.
 
Working for Siemens Communication Networks (ICN, now Siemens Com) in 98/99, we were tasked with defining the new information architecture while the whole siemens online CD was in a state of flux. We proposed a solution that used drop down menus - then a first at Siemens. That enabled us to lose two navigational levels. Our solution tested significantly better with an in-house usability test at Siemens and was successively applied at other Siemens sites and won us Siemens Medical and Siemens Power Distribution as new accounts.
 
In 2001 I was part of the pitch Team for the relaunch of the T-Mobile Online Shop. We won the pitch, but at that time, KabelNewMedia went bankrupt. T-Mobile encouraged the pitch team to take the job to a new agency. We convinced SinnerSchrader of this opportunity and they opened a small office in Berlin for the pitch team. My Job was to create a better user experience, one that hid the complexity of the product (mobile contract) and deliver a more engaging way to present the phones. We managed to relaunch the new shop in time for the 2002 CeBit.
 
The shop relaunch landed us another T-Mobile job: Usability Consulting for a browser-based MS Exchange application. The application pushed mail and contacts onto the users devices, using different interfaces based on connection speed and client-side hardware. Within one month we managed to get the application from an lets-scrap-this state to a usable prototype that was presented to the international press at CeBit.
 
Usability and User Experience were the core objectives during my work for E-Plus at Interone (formerly BBDO Interone). From relaunching the i-mode™ website (twice 2002 and 2004), developing a new website targeting teens and twens (eplus-unlimited). To help E-Plus generate more online revenue, whe were tasked to improve the usability of the online shop and devise several online marketing initiatives. Within 14 months, the monthly orders had risen from low numbers in the four-figures area to nearly tenfold (post-christmas sales).
 
Beginning 2006 - after the successful launch of the “New BASE face” campaign - I decided to leave Interone and start freelance. Since then I worked for several leading interactive agencies on IA on User Experience jobs. From May 2007 to April 2008 I headed an in-house creative team at _dug (debitel group) tasked with the relaunch of the online shop and the corporate website.
 

Other Selected Projects
 
_dug, User Experience Lead, Creative Lead: Website and Online Shops Relaunch
 
Late 2006 debitel acquired the mobile phone retail chain_dug telekom AG. At the time of the acquisition, the _dug online shop was due for an extensive overhaul. As User Experience and Creatve Lead my task was to build the information architecture and user experience of the new website, oversee the development of the new design, coordinate the development of the in-house developers and the external Typo3 developers.
 

 
Total: Da Vinci Code sweepstakes
 
Total offers its customers not only gas but a wide array of products, even including DVDs, Total wanted to use the release of the DaVinci Code DVD to promote its DVD offers. The solution was a two-staged sweepstakes. The first, the offline stage was a simple POS postcard, that offered the DVD as a prize. The customer had to solve a simple puzzle, that gave him a codeword. With the codeword, he could not only send in the postcard but also gained access to an online game, that offered a weekend in Paris as a main prize. The two-staged sweepstakes ensured, that more than two-thirds of all offline partiipants played the online game and registered there user data with Total.
 
My job on thos project: Idea & User-Experience development, project lead for the Interone creative team and coordination with the offline ad agency of Total Germany KNSK
 

BASE: The new face of BASE
 
The Goal: Crossmedia Promotion of the then newly introduced BASE brand.
The solution: open (free to all particapants) online casting for the “new face of BASE” campaign. Participants could post pictures of themselves with a short personal profile. Users were encouraged to vote for the participants through a sweepstake. The top 100 participants were screened by a jury, 80 participants were invited to a casting in Düsseldorf. The casting was documented on the web and five winners were chosen. With all five winners, billboard ads were produced and published in the areas, were the winners lived.
My Job: Idea Development and presentation of the campaign at e-plus, account management for this project. User Experience development of the campaign website, project lead for the creative team.