The German Design Award is considered to be an outstanding accolade for design agencies contributing to the fields of product and communication design. The nomination and participation itself is an honor, as it is required to be the winner of either a regional competition, a selection process approved by the German Design Council or an international contest. Centigrade was nominated for the German Design Award due to the iF communication design award the company received in 2010 for the design of a Touchscreen HMI.

Thomas Immich, managing director Centigrade GmbH: “Winning the iF communication design award was already a big honor for us. Receiving yet another commendation as a consequence is a twofold acknowledgement of our work.

Especially in the field of touch-screen HMIs there are little to no design standards. While this opens up creative freedom on the one hand, it is also accompanied with the risk of making poor or even wrong design decisions. As this project has been honored twice by now, it shows that a solid user-centered design process, that is the combination of iterative prototyping and usability testing, is an effective way to validate innovative concepts, in order to eliminate design risks before the product enters production.”

Centigrade follows the nomination with a submission for the category “product interfaces”. The related project was conducted in collaboration with Centigrade’s client OMICRON electronics. The scope of the project covered conception, design and implementation of OMICRON’s new product CMControl. The CMControl is a mobile touch-screen control unit for OMICRON devices, which are used to conduct testings in the field of energy supply.

Centigrade conceptualized the control unit’s interaction design as well as its screen and icon design. As the targeted user group also consists of electricians with little PC background, the interface needed to be optimized for exceptional ease of use. In addition, in order to live up to the expectations of OMICRON, users who are accustomed to high-quality products, the visual design needed to be aligned appropriately.

About German Design Award

The German Design Award is sponsored by the German Design Council and funded by the German Ministry of Economy and Technology. The German Design Award is bestowed in recognition of outstanding achievements in the fields of product design (regular production items from all sectors) and communication design (analogue and digital media, as well as 3D and live communication). More information about the Award can be found on the official German Design Award website.