Global change in the economy often leads to extensive structural change. This was also the case in Saarland. The decline of the coal and steel industry in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in the loss of more than 60,000 jobs. However, the campaign of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labor, Energy and Transport shows that Saarland is made up of more than just coal and steel.

Zukunftsschmiede Saarland

In the “Zukunftsschmiede Saarland” campaign of the Saarland Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labor, Energy and Transport, the Saarland was examined from completely different angles. A state that is a strong and modern industrial state. An industrial state 4.0 – more sustainable, more innovative and more broadly based. To this end, four forward-looking projects were considered: One of them was the IOT Assist project by Centigrade.

Centigrade – IoT Assist – Inner pig meets final opponent

Digitalization presents us with major health challenges. More and more jobs are becoming desk jobs, and balanced exercise or work in the fresh air is becoming less and less of a requirement – with negative consequences for the musculature and psyche. But digitalization also brings great opportunities: The IoT Assist project motivates people to integrate a healthier lifestyle into their everyday working lives – thanks to a combination of IoT technologies and gamification concepts.

The announced goal of the IoT Assist project is the development of a platform that enables communication between devices and services in the IoT and wearable area. This platform offers the possibility to implement intelligent assistance systems for health promotion in a simple and intuitive way. Here, particular focus is placed on the integration of existing device ecosystems in everyday and home environments to address the growing problem of isolated solutions. To ensure that the different technologies can be easily integrated, we provide a technology-neutral interface including various AI modules. In user-centered workshops, individual assistance systems tailored to the user are built and tested in daily professional life.

The motivation concepts developed in the IoTAssist project rely on “gamification”. 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 also very likely to stop taking the action – i.e., the health-seeking behavior. The person was merely “extrinsically motivated.”

Gamification, on the other hand, is about awakening the “intrinsic motivation” of each person. To do this, a rational action (e.g., “I need to move to get the insurance premium.”), should become an emotional action (“I want to move because it makes me feel better.”). Instead of focusing on the reward, the focus becomes personal progress.

In the project, Centigrade designs and analyzes various IoT prototypes, conducts user studies, and optimally adapts the motivational design in the software modules to the psychological needs of the users.

In addition to Centigrade, the research panel consists of other Saarland-based companies, including DFKI, DHfPG, and Eyeled. Other partners are the Stuttgart-based company ThingOS, the Technical University of Munich, and the University of Duisburg-Essen.

In the first year of the project, a promising partnership has already been formed between Centigrade and the Munich-based startup Walkolution, which is revolutionizing office work “while walking”.

In addition, Centigrade is launching Germany’s first “Digital Outdoor Office” this summer as part of the IoTAssist project in response to colleagues’ “home office fatigue”. For this purpose, Centigrade has developed a desk that enables outdoor screen work even in intense sunlight.

Thomas Immich, Owner & Managing Director Centigrade

 

„In this forward-looking project, we are getting to the bottom of a highly explosive question: What really motivates people, especially in the long term, to behave more healthily in their daily working lives?“

 

We’ve all been working from home for a year now. But after a year in the home office, we’ve noticed that we’re missing something crucial: human interaction. The creative, colorful activity in a shared place. So we set out to find a solution.

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We are proud to offer user-centric solutions not only for clients, but also for our employees. At Centigrade, we all now have the ability to leave the four walls from time to time and be just as productive outdoors as we are in the office. At the same time, we also see each other completely real and yet safe again. We are really looking forward to it 🙂

Digitization? Yes! But is that only possible from a permanent, stationary office? We don’t think so 🙂

Providing a good working environment is one of the most important goals at Centigrade. An environment that allows all employees to come to creative life.

Corona hasn’t made that any easier.

Of course, we’ve all been in the home office since April 2020, and of course, working in the home office has also made a lot of things easier.
But after a year in the home office, we’ve noticed that we’re missing something crucial:

The human interaction. The creative, colorful activity in a shared place.

That’s why, even before there were any vaccination plans in sight, we started thinking about what the working world of tomorrow might look like as an alternative.

After all, we are UX professionals! We translate human needs into innovative solutions every day! Why not do the same here?

In countless remote meetings and Miro Board sessions, we finally came up with the one crucial idea. We want to redefine collaboration and workspaces.

When are you in a flow state and what does that even mean? Does gamification only consist of points and rewards? Thomas Immich answers these questions in the Konzepthaus Digital Podcast with Samuel Lottner.

Establishing communication, responsibilities and processes at concept, design and software engineering is sometimes a lion’s task. The gap is still extremely large. “They don’t talk to each other” – according to Thomas. But how do you bridge these disciplines?

In the Moodboard Podcast, Thomas Immich and Samuel Lottner address this.

Back in October 2020, Thomas Immich highlighted the development of virtual and augmented technologies in his presentation “Inner pig dog meets boss” at the Health Reality event. However, VR & AR in medical technology will continue to be of interest to us in 2021. read more…

Customer loyalty is more important than ever. But how can UX and gamification be used to really bind customers to a product or a company? Thomas Immich will answer this exciting question in his presentation “The user in flow with his energy – Why UX & Gamification know neither tariff nor service boundaries” on Tuesday, March 9 at the “User Group Product Management and Sales” event organized by Energieforen. The presentation will be supported by current project examples from practice. read more…

FOCUS-Business publishes an annual list of the top employers of medium-sized businesses in cooperation with kununu. Centigrade has made it to the list again in the 2021 edition thanks to the good kununu ratings! Yeah, we are happy!

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Since the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, scientists and politicians have been appealing to the common sense and responsibility of all companies to send employees to the home office wherever possible. Now a list of positive examples is circulating on the web. Centigrade is on it!

read more…

Dear readers,

the year 2020 played havoc and will forever be remembered by the collective memory. The corona virus has caused staggering losses. Against the background of human losses, it seems a little cynical to write about financial setbacks. Therefore let me say in advance: Although it is one of the toughest economic years in our 15 years of existence for Centigrade and all our colleagues, all of us are first and foremost grateful that we and our closest environment are not affected by health problems.

This year our card design symbolizes the adaptability and team spirit that our colleagues have demonstrated more than ever before. The transition from close cooperation to a geographically separated home office has caused us very few problems, both technically and in terms of content, as this working mode has always been an integral part of our modern work culture. Like in a bustling beehive, all colleagues continued to work on their own honeycomb and knew what to do for the big picture through constant communication. After the first wave, however, we also noticed how many colleagues were drawn back to the shared office space. Unfortunately, this kind of  “swarming together” will not happen in the long run and will need a lot of perseverance.

In addition, we have decided to adapt our branch office strategy to the new working from home situation. For example, we moved our Mülheim a. d. Ruhr location to a smaller office in Düsseldorf and closed our Munich location  indefinitely. We have also converted many of our collaborative UX workshop and training formats to solely remote formats. Just recently, a group of participants on the customer side unanimously confirmed that this new form of collaboration is in no way inferior to traditional face-to-face events.

We continue to see a positive outlook, particularly from the fact that we have been able to gradually reduce the temporary short-time work which we had to introduce due to the overall economic situation since the middle of the year. Now we got back to our first month without short-time working.

We would therefore like to thank all our colleagues for taking these drastic steps and for allowing us to remain a functioning unit. Especially in our 15th anniversary year, this means a lot to me personally and we all toasted to this with good wine at our digital anniversary celebration.

A further bright ray of hope was provided by the fact that, together with our long-standing life science customer Tecan, we are no longer just passive observers of the corona crisis in our professional everyday work: this year, Tecan asked us to develop and optimize the user experience for certain applications. Tecan machines, which are used in many German test laboratories, are also used to perform the very important Sars-CoV-2 tests. So now PCR test workflows like this one are defining the fascinating new world of topics that our UX designers and engineers are able to address. The whole project team is highly motivated by the meaningfulness of this work. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Tecan for the trust they have placed in our work.

We would also like to thank you – especially for remaining loyal to us and for taking so many of the partly rocky new paths of cooperation with us. Without your commitment and reliability, we would not have been able to master this year so unscathed. We hope that you have been spared from the corona virus in your private life and will continue to be so.

Due to the special circumstances, we even more wish you and your family this year that the upcoming Christmas brings you some relaxing and contemplative days. I would like to conclude by saying that we wish you good health first and foremost – much more than the often vaunted business success.

Thomas Immich
Owner & Managing Director