This year’s “Usability Professionals” – the largest conference for usability professionals in the German-speaking world – was held in Berlin. During the closing event on September 9, the Best Session Award was presented to the speakers that received the most favorable audience ratings for their session in feedback questionnaires. This year, Dr. Markus Weber and Thomas Immich of Centigrade were amongst the awardees.

The award-winning session focused on “Animated User Interfaces”. Centigrade contributed a talk on “Animations in User Interface Design – More Than Eye Candy”, which shed light on conceptual aspects of animations as well as providing the audience with a practical demonstration of animation design in form of an animated facility management system user interface.

Dr. Markus Weber: “We are very pleased that the session we contributed to received such positive feedback. The contributions of our co-speakers as well as the discussions with the audience have shown how exciting and relevant the topic is for usability and user experience. The award spurs us to further pursue the topic and to engage in knowledge exchange with colleagues in our domain.”

Thomas Immich: “Talking to the audience during the session and afterwards has shown that the topic of animations is highly relevant for user interface design. As animations are here to stay, Centigrade will continue engaging in this field – in order to create state of the art user interfaces as well as provide practitioners with helpful information on animation design. Using professional GUI design tools such as Microsoft® Expression Blend™ and Adobe® Flash® as well as having solid working knowledge in the field of motion design is essential for our work.”

Overall, Centigrade’s employees come to a very positive conclusion regarding the “Usability Professionals” conference as well as the “Mensch & Computer”, which was held in parallel. Thomas Immich: “A wide variety of sessions, workshops and opportunities for personal exchange with other practitioners made visiting the conferences worthwhile and inspiring. We would like to thank the organizers, speakers and visitors for this highly recommendable event.”

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