Johanna Kollmann, BA

Eckdaten

Jobtitle: Director Company: Us and the Machines Ltd

Did you discover your enthusiasm for UX design during your information design studies?

"Absolutely! Thanks to Konrad Baumann, I was already at Siemens during my internship and worked there in the area of user interface design and prototyping. In the course of that, I was allowed to participate in a research project that dealt with a future-oriented, networked house (smart home). That was incredibly exciting because at that time there was no iPhone. I then wrote my diploma thesis at Siemens - it was about a mobile phone application for Siemens in the health sector."

What happened next for you after your diploma thesis?

"After a short phase in Berlin, I went to Vienna and worked at Frequentis, which is active in the field of safety-critical applications, for about 1.5 years. Then I decided to tackle another Master's degree in Human Computer Interaction in London. I have to say it was totally helpful that I had studied and worked in information design before because I knew exactly what I wanted. I specialised in agile working for my master's thesis - how designers work in an agile environment, which was relatively new at the time."

Was it difficult to find a job in London after your Master's degree?

"Quite the opposite: I started a UX design job at an agency right after graduating. Through that network from back then, I still get my freelance jobs today and work with those contacts regularly. During the financial crisis, I worked at Vodafone and luckily found a niche: I was in charge of a startup there that had been bought by Vodafone and was already working in an agile way. That totally interested me, and I was able to learn a lot through them."

You've been self-employed since 2014, how can people imagine your work?

Today I mainly do user research and product management. A concrete example: I was responsible for user research at a consulting company for one year, I led the team there, and the company had developed new products and services in the course of a change management project that were to be used by the internal users. My task was on the one hand usability testing of the design and on the other hand to generate insights into the user needs and attitudes of the users.

In another project, I do service and user experience design and work more closely with the developers. The service is about, for example, if you want to study in the UK and you come from a country where tuberculosis still exists, you have to prove that you don't have tuberculosis. At the moment this process is not yet digital, and in the process of digitalization, I am working on the different user groups, clinical requirements, etc.

Do you feel user experience design is a growing segment?

"Definitely. As a developer, you have to speak for the users, so everything has to be fact-based. Unfortunately, it still happens that, especially in the field of service design, decisions are made by companies without considering what the user journey actually is and what users really need. Part of my job is to think through exactly these criteria and find out where the priorities lie."

So, in addition to your know-how, companies book you for your unbiased perspective?

Yes, it's really often easier as a freelancer to say I would do it this way or that way. You are already bought in as an outsider to also name things critically!

How would you describe the input of studying information design on your career?

I didn't know at the beginning of my studies that I would go into the field of UX, I owe it all to the UAS. The broad education helped me a lot, we had art classes with Jörg Schlick, for example. At the time, I didn't realise how relevant that was. Only now, looking back, do I know what we learned from him: namely, to present work well, to give constructive criticism and, at the same time, to endure constructive criticism. And that's what you need in my job every time and every day.