Short profile

• Interaction Designer with 10+ years work experience (BA)
• Started to specialize in Interaction Design during apprenticeship in 2009
• Founder of a company: Working for different clients as a contractor since 2017
• Experience working in Telecom and IT (Swisscom), Health Insurance (Sanitas), Banking (Raiffeisen), Logistics (BDK Informatik AG), Newspaper (Direct Mail Company AG and Tamedia)
• Fast learner and logical thinker

Skills

Interaction Design / UX (main focus)

• Creating wireframes, usability reviews, process- and screenflows, prototypes
• Analyzing existing products for UX issues
• Defining personas and user scenarios
• Planning, leading through and evaluating usability tests
• Integrating new requirements and features

Visual Design

• Mockups
• Moodboards
• Visual Benchmark
• UI Reviews
• Basic animations
• Illustrations
• Icons

Tools

• Sketch
• Figma
• Craft / inVision
• Zeplin / Gallery (I am not using the Adobe Creative Suite products anymore)
• For ideation: paper and copic pencils.

Platforms

• Web
• Tablet
• Mobile (Web & App)
• TV

Project management

• Schedules for time and resources (for design tasks)
• Defining milestones

Further competences

• Logical thinking
• Quick understanding of complex structures
• Sense of responsibility
• Reliable
• Communicative

Stays abroad

2012

5 months in Auckland, New Zealand

A quick description of my job as an Interaction Designer / UX Specialist

A user interface is not something that can be reused many times, it has to be very specific for each product and industry. To build a good user interface, a Designer has to know the industry very well or the product will not be good in the end. So an Interaction Designer must always be interested in gaining expert knowledge in new areas. To gain expert knowledge, an Interaction Designer has to research a lot. Besides self-studies, he is in constant collaboration with experts in that field whom to gain insights from. Only when an Interaction Designer understands the goal of the project, he can build a user interface that the user will understand easily.

Ideally, a Designer gets information in the form of product requirements that have been elaborated by user researchers. After some clarification of these requirements, the Designer can now start working on the product. For example, he can already draw wireframes or if that is too early, he creates more basic concepts like process flows or hierarchy diagrams.

Doing this, he is in constant collaboration with with product managers (to review the work), researchers (to test the prototypes), engineers (to check technical feasibility and give suggestions) and of course, other Designers.

The goal is to create user interfaces that provide all essential information to the user, but do not feel overloaded. The interface should be logical and easy to use. How he does that: Collect information, decide which information is important, at what time the user needs which information or challenge whether information can be left out entirely. Then, the information has to be organized logically into groups or types that belong together in order to find a hierarchy, ranking, scale, etc. A Designer makes sure that a consistency of patterns is given throughout the product. Before inventing new UX patterns, a Designer should always evaluate if there is a common pattern that already exists. When all information is organized well and the sketching is done, he starts drawing wireframes, creates prototypes and visual design screens. Now, the project ideas and visions are tangible and easy to understand for everyone on the project.

Besides the user, one very important stakeholder is the programmer who is finally coding the product. In order for the programmer to work efficiently, the Interaction Designer has to hand over very precise concepts that are structured well.