In the world of programming nowadays there are lot of technologies and huge amount of frameworks to build any kind of application for any needs. But these technologies sometimes are divided into layers which intersect quite rarely. For instance, the Web world has numbers of Javascript frameworks that help to build vivid UI with various styles, animations, etc. On the other hand, banking software has to be robust, reliable and able to process huge amount of transactions per second. And another world is social networks that should provide a lot of content in mobile environment under conditions of slow internet and not very powerful devices. What if we try to pick up the strength of each technology and combine them?

Hi, I´m Mikhail from Centigrade. This is the first article of the technical blog series about GraphQL Web-API, its implementation in .Net 6.0 and how it should be consumed by React client. read more…

The title of this article is admittedly quite epic. However, I find it difficult to quickly explain what Impact-Driven Design has to do with saving our planet, as there are now too many terms and methods mixed up in the UX community. Therefore, I’d like to start with a bit of term sharpening – bear with me. read more…

Because neither Lean UX nor Scrum nor SAFe alone provided the answer to our challenges, we developed our own UX process kit: Continuous UX. read more…

I had recently published the article UX Design is dead – long live UX Design and described in it why I think a new understanding of the role of UX Designer* is urgently needed. My call then was:

Let’s modernize the role ‘UX Designer*in’ together to make the digitalized world of tomorrow a little bit better with better products and services.

One reason for the call was that even after many years in the industry, the gap between UX designers and software engineers still seemed too big to me. Fortunately I got a lot of input from other professional UX & CX or digital design professionals, software engineers or – in general – product creators. Thank you for that, because it gave me the opportunity to further sharpen my thoughts on the role of ‘UX designer’. read more…

Gamification is the “application of game-typical elements in a non-game context”. Gamification is by no means the same as conventional incentive or reward systems. A reward is merely an “external trigger”, i.e. a manual impulse that is intended to get someone to perform an action. For example, a health insurance company pays a premium if the client exercises more frequently. However, if this external trigger falls away, the person is very likely to stop taking the action – i.e., the health-seeking behavior – as well. The person was merely “extrinsically motivated.” read more…

In our last blog post on the LOUISA project, we went into what the project is all about and what the goals are. In this blog post, we want to shed some light on the start of the practical work and our process. Everything starts with the first persona and its scenario…

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The start of a new UX designer role model.

A lot has happened … and then it hasn’t.

I’ve really been around the so-called UX scene for quite a while now. As the owner and CEO of Centigrade, I’ve been running one of the most successful UX companies in Germany for over 15 years. But since I moved from video game development 20 years ago into what was then called usability and user interface design, not much has actually changed. Sure – new tools have emerged and disappeared again. Methods have been hyped and then replaced by supposedly even better methods. The end devices and design options have become more numerous and somehow no one talks about pixels anymore, because that was settled with 4K monitors at the latest.

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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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