The transformation of a traditional industrial plant into a “smart factory” confronts companies with major challenges in many ways. One of the most important aspects, in addition to the development and implementation of new processes and IoT-enabled production equipment, is the human factor. There is a wide range of training and education to make employees fit for the machines. At Centigrade, we take a different approach and develop user interfaces that make machines fit for employees. In this interview, our CEO Thomas Immich explains why Industry 4.0 is more than new, networked machines and why the human-machine interface needs to be rethought. read more…

Hello, my name is Joshua and I was wondering how do you become a UX designer in two weeks to get so well versed in the subject to solve a real-world problem? This blog post is like a little log on my journey through the world of UX design. read more…

Introduction to the research project

In the context of our research project on the topic of IoT (Internet of Things) and digital health management, we deal with the question of how to motivate people to increase health-promoting behavior at work and at home.

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What is the LOUISA project about?

The LOUISA project was launched by the Center for Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine at Essen University Hospital and the Essen University Medical Center Foundation. In everyday hospital life, the legal representatives of sick children are often the first point of contact when it comes to explanations and information about complex measures or illnesses. This project aims to focus on the sick children in order to inform them in a way that is appropriate to their situation and time. Especially for chronically ill children with protracted treatments, an understanding of their illness is an indispensable prerequisite for effective treatment. This applies both to the hospital stay and to the subsequent time at home. It is very important that patients regularly document certain values, adhere to their medication schedule and monitor vital signs.

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Often, long-standing processes at large corporations are to be transformed into a new digital customer experience. The result should be intuitive, fun and eliminate any barriers to entry. Can you briefly describe how you guys approach such a task?

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MightyU is an extraordinary research project for children with infantile cerebral paresis, in short: ICP or CP. ICP is a chronic movement disorder caused by early childhood brain damage. With the approaches of Gamification and Virtual Reality, MightyU wants to achieve that the affected children and adolescents can perform their therapy exercises more playfully and independently at home. Managing Director Thomas Immich answered important questions about the research project in a short question-and-answer interview:

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Part 1 of this article highlighted a few points that can be used to prevent a good UX strategy in a company. Part 2 is now dedicated to topics that support a good UX strategy.  The top 5 things that should be done to enable a sustainable UX strategy are not dependent on the size of the company or project. Neither can they be limited to a specific industry or sector.

Each of these 5 things is based on real situations in real teams and real companies.Possible similarities with known situations or recognition cannot be excluded.

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Nowadays it’s obvious for a company to approach the topic of user experience and try to take advantage of the human-centred design into their own organization as part of a UX strategy. However, the nature of the topic “UX”, which combines technical as well as design and analytical domains through a new approach, quite often creates organizational heartburn… because management often does not really know where exactly such expertise is located. And even if you have found a home for UX in the organization… how to deal with it?

The first part of the article is about 5 things that you shouldn’t do if you want to successfully introduce UX in the company. Each of these 5 things is based on real situations found in real teams and real companies. A possible resemblance to known situations or recognition cannot therefore be ruled out ?.

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In this blog article, we want to show what steps are necessary to design a character in a game. As an example we use the research project MightyU, which deals with the development of a playful application to support the therapy of children and adolescents with infantile cerebral palsy (ICP). read more…

Big Data is considered the trend topic of digitization. Some even claim that data is the new gold. But usage data is a treasure trove that has seldom been used to analyse usability with quantitative methods. What possibilities are there for measurably improving UX with usage data and supporting product owners in their decisions?  Get a first overview of the analysis of usage data in my blog article.

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Introduction

One, in my opinion positive trend is that companies increasingly want to involve their potential users in the development. This can happen in many different ways: The spectrum ranges from market research interviews to data analysis of websites and various usability test methods. Testing is particularly important in order to obtain more intensive and detailed information about the problems and, above all, the user needs. However, especially with usability tests it can often be observed that they are only used when prototypes are already very mature. These are then often heavyweight tests in which everything is to be checked with as many participants as possible. The late timing of the tests leads to the fact that resulting adaptations involve high development efforts, since the majority of the application has already been implemented. Changes to concepts, on the other hand, are less complex. Especially in pure screen-based testing, where the user needs are left out, it can happen that the development has to be started almost from scratch. A complete misalignment of the application with the right user-needs should not occur at all. Companies are therefore faced with a whole range of challenges if the user is not to be left out in UX.

In this article, I would like to show how we solve these challenges and involve potential users early on in the project using various test methods, in order to create a basis for further development.

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On December, 12th 2018, I listened to an interview with Dr. Carsten Breitfeld, a world-renowned expert in electric mobility, and the co-founder & CEO of the company BYTON which aims at turning the car into a next-generation smart device. He was a guest at the ‘Der Flaneur’ Podcast (German only), live from the Websummit conference 2018 in Lisbon.

Breitfeld spent the past 20 years at BMW, leading a range of key engineering divisions within chassis development, powertrain development and corporate strategy. Before joining BYTON, Dr. Carsten Breitfeld was Vice President and Head of Vehicle Program i8 of BMW Group.

Listening to the podcast (unfortunately available only in German) you can see his vision of cars becoming basically smart devices on wheels, platforms for services and more. Because as cars become more and more autonomous, people sitting inside of these cars want to be entertained and engaged. This is also where BYTON wants to earn its bigger share of revenue: with services instead of car sales.

Dr. Carsten Breitfeld

 

“As cars become smarter and autonomous we need a new kind of user experience. Because the question is what are people doing inside the car while they are commuting.”

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