Professional Work
Volkswagen AG: volkswagen.com and volkswagen.de
Projectmanagement for Volkswagen's international and German brand portals
I worked with the Internetmarketing department at Volkswagen AG between 2006 and 2007, managing multiple projects for the German car manufacturer's international brand portal volkswagen.com as well as the German web presence volkswagen.de.
As the main contact person for the implementing creative agencies, I analyzed and evaluated interface design and campaign proposals and conceptualized campaign requirements.
Volkswagen AG: Schlämmer's Quest
Projectmanagement for a viral Internetmarketing campaign at Volkswagen AG
This was a very interesting and innovative project I worked on as a project manager at Volkswagen AG. This viral internetmarketing campaign involved a German celebrity and social web platforms such as blogs, YouTube and MySpace.
The project was awarded with a silver and a bronze Lion at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival as well as with the German Multimedia Award for the category Web 2.0 applications.
Wintershall AG Pressdatabase
Pressdatabase for the Wintershall AG intranet, developed at VisionConnect GmbH
This was a project done as part of my work at VisionConnect GmbH, Hannover in 2003. The customer, Wintershall AG, part of the BASF Group, requested a solution which allowed their employees to conveniently browse and search press articles relevant to the company from various sources.
I implemented the database backend using Lotus Domino as a server and the administration interface for adding content in Lotus Notes.
Freelance Work
AudioCrusher
Audio conversion software for Windows
Started in 1999 as a spare time project, AudioCrusher enjoyed a rapidly growing user base, with over a million downloads so far and counting. It has been published on cover CDs of magazines and on Internet software portals around the world.
AudioCrusher was developed completely in plain C using only the standard Windows API and thus is a very lightweight CD ripping and encoding solution.
Even though development has slowed down a little, due to other personal responsibilities, it is still widely used and the AudioCrusher homepage still attracts more than 100 visitors each day.
From the many positive reviews and user comments I have received as well as the awards which AudioCrusher has won so far, it appears that AudioCrusher is appreciated by its users for its apparent ease of use. Its clean interface, alongside a set of flexible configuration options with sensible defaults make it a useful tool for both novice and more advanced users.
More information about AudioCrusher can be found on its homepage.
Graduate Unversity Work
Family Magnet
Web-based video messaging application
The goal of Family Magnet is to enhance the relationship between college students away from home and their families. The web application provides “a window into the activities of the family”, allowing family members to keep in touch using an asynchronous video messaging system.
For this 5 person group project, we conducted immersive exploratory research through interviews to identify the needs of our target users.
As a group, we developed 3 metaphors and accompanying storyboards for how people engage in conversations in different environments. Based on user feedback, we then chose the 'Hanging out in the kitchen' metaphor as the underlying concept for our interface design. We went through several design prototypes which we evaluated using think-aloud studies.
I implemented the final prototype using Adobe Flex for the frontend component and PHP and MySQL via the CakePHP web application framework for the server backend.
RideTime
iPhone bus schedule application
The RideTime iPhone application aims to provide users with an at-a-glance personalized bus schedule so that users can decide to either run to catch the bus or wait and find better use for their time.
What sets RideTime apart from existing transit planning applications is its focus on travellers who frequent a fixed set of trips rather than a one time route by focusing on the question: How long will it take for the next bus I can take to arrive?
Within this 5 person group project, I conceptualized the initial project proposal, which was then refined into the requirements for the application. We then as a group developed the two personas upon which we would base the interface design. I wrote scenarios for these two personas describing how they would use our application in an everyday situation and designed the application flow as well as the underlying wireframes for the interface design. Finally, I developed the semi-interactive prototype shown in the demo above using Flash which we used during our final presentation of the design.
Media Center Interface Prototype
Software Architectures For User Interfaces final project
This individual project demonstrates the use of several adanced interaction techniques such as stacks and gesture recognition within a prototype for a media center application which acts as a presentation layer for desktop applications such as photo software or music players.
As the final project for a class focused on software architectures for user interfaces, it experiments with state-of-the-art open source APIs for Linux operating systems such as the Clutter rich-media GUI toolkit on top of OpenGL in order to provide a visually engaging interactive experience.
I designed all the interaction techniques as well as the visual style used in the prototype and developed the application from scratch using the Vala programming language on Linux.
I am in the process of updating my portfolio with my graduate unversity work I did at Carnegie Mellon University. More projects will follow here soon.
Undergraduate University Work
Undergraduate Thesis
Back & Forth: Improving Desktop Usability Through Efficient Window Switching Methods - A Comparative Study Of Two Prototypes
Ever since the introduction of window based user interfaces in the 1980s, window management has influenced the way people work with desktop computers today. Nevertheless, little has changed in terms of the interaction methods used in today's operating systems and their window managers, even though window clutter and limited screen space are known problems. On the other hand, graphics and processing power has been steadily increasing, potentially allowing for newer and more advanced interaction concepts.
In order to provide possible solutions to these problems, two new methods of task-switching are proposed and discussed in the thesis.
The discussion first focuses on the extent to which the work flow of a user is affected by window management and second what the cognitive implications of this workflow are. In order to empirically assess the validity of these two new methods in a realistic environment, they have been implemented in an existing desktop environment which is used to conduct several user tests. The test results are finally scrutinised with regard to whether the new methods provide solutions to the described problems and questions.
Crash!
Explorative virtual reality experience, 5th semester group project
Crash! places the user in a spaceship crash scene on an unknown planet. The user, as the protagonist of the explorative story, now has to try to repair the spaceship and retrieve the fuel cells which were lost during the landing in order to escape the hazardous planet.
Crash! was implemented in the University at Buffalo's virtual reality laboratory, using the CAVE system.
I worked as the project lead and specifically developed the two handed interaction techniques used throughout the experience, for example for picking up fuel cells from the ground and inserting them into the ship's engine.
JetRacer
3D Racing Game with a custom hardware interface, 3rd semester group project
JetRacer uses a custom built hardware interface to simulate the rough experience of riding a futuristic JetSki across an ocean course. Players can use their own bodyweight to influence the behaviour of the vehicle in the water and to make sharp and quick turns.
As part of my group activities, I conceptualized and built the hardware interface and implemented the software integration for controlling the game physics using C++.
Audio Audience Interaction
Interactive cartoon for large audiences, 2nd semester group project
AAI is an interactive cartoon with which a large audience can interact by applauding, cheering or yelling. Social reactions by the audience and grouping is encouraged by a strong storyline and controversial characters.
The use of auditory information for interacting with the movie results in a continuous plot possesing all the dramatic elements of a linear storyline while still allowing the audience to influence the outcome of the story in an entertaining way.
Each of the group's 4 members chose one of the 4 characters in the story to conceptualize, develop into a modular Adobe Flash component and voice-act. We then integrated each character into the storyline and final cartoon application used for live audiences.