Helmut Ness originally started his career in type design, typography and corporate design. Following his studies in Wiesbaden, he joined with two partners to establish “Fuenfwerken”, a design agency focusing on corporate design. In the year 2000 Ness moved to Berlin to set up and grow 5W’s office in the German capital under its new name “Fuenfwerken Design AG.”

Today, together with the 5W team, he supports clients such as Clariant, Weber, Volkswagen and Munich’s Transport Authority by finding and implementing business design solutions centered around people’s needs, where product and service innovations inspire brand loyalty.

Helmut Ness is an International speaker, e.g. at Shanghai Design Biennale, Dongdao University Beijing, TDC New York, tgm, and Typo. He is a board member of IDZ Berlin, and a member of the expert panel at IIID, Vienna, as well as co–founder of 5W’s design initiative gestaltBildung.

After a professional training as an industrial manager, Karsten Henze graduated in communication at the University of Arts in Berlin.

Starting 1990 he worked for five years as an employed advertising consultant at Siemens and joined MetaDesign in 1995, one of the leading corporate design-agencies, where he worked as a design and project manager on complex design systems such as Volkswagen, Dusseldorf Airport and the Berlin Transportation Authority. In 2000 he changed to Pixelpark AG, a then leading multimedia-agency, where he worked as an account director for clients in the German retail branch.

For 17 years, Karsten Henze was head of the Corporate Design/Corporate Identity and Creation Department of Deutsche Bahn, a leading international transportation and logistics services provider. Working with an in-house team of communication and industrial designers he is in charge of the global brand appearance of the entire DB-group, from “DB Bahn” to “DB Schenker”, from stationery and sales literature to railway interiors.

Karsten Henze is executive chairman of the board of the International Design Center (IDZ) in Berlin und holds a lectureship at the University of Applied Science, HTW Berlin.

Ole leads the Customer Experience Management team within the Technology and Innovation Board department at Deutsche Telekom. He started his career as a user experience designer and has since expanded his knowledge to include agile product development and new technologies such as AI and voice interfaces.

Ole and his team view customer experience from a holistic perspective. They focus on the context of each interaction within an end-to-end customer journey. Ole firmly believes that new ways of working are needed – and that there is a direct link between the employee experience and the customer experience.

Judith Peeten is an experienced designer focused on designing in context while having the user, business and technology in mind. Challenged and inspired while working in a multi-disciplinary team and she is an expert on User Experience Design for Healthcare and Design Systems.

Since 2019 she is leading a team of UX Designers that design solutions for professional Healthcare and the Digital Design Language System of Philips. She strongly believes in learning by doing and guides people to trust and build on their own strengths.

Tracy Rolling is Experience Director at Futurice in Berlin, one of the largest independent innovation consultancies in Europe. Tracy has long been focused on emerging technology, especially the IoT. Tracy speaks on topics including how to stay human centric when working in emerging technology, the opportunities and dangers of automated systems, and how to escape the pathology of optimism that prevents us from designing new technologies in a way that is compatible with democracy and equity. In the past, Tracy has worked at Philips, building mobile applications for connected consumer healthcare devices, and at Nokia where she built location-based services and worked on research projects in VR, AR, and Wearables.

Werner Spicka has been Executive Director of the interdisciplinary Interaction Experience Unit since 2016.

His focus is based on constant confrontation with the rapidly changing challenges of interaction design and the transfer of strategies and ideas into feasible designs. His wide knowledge and cross-industry experience in design development, implementation and consulting help him and his team to create new and brand-defining interactive experiences.

He gives lectures on current UI design developments and methods in UI design and has been awarded prizes such as the "iF communication design award" and the "Good Design Award."

After studying industrial design at the Academy of Art and Design in Stuttgart, Julia Ehrensberger gained professional experience in the fields of packaging design (Windi Winderlich Design, Hamburg), sanitary ware (Design Chemaitis & Strehl, Hanover) and corporate design (isaria Corporate Design AG, Munich).

In 2005, she joined the Siemens design department at BSH Hausgeräte GmbH, in charge of product and design development for various product categories and markets. Since 2015, she has dealt with advance design development topics, partly also moving beyond core BSH business fields. The focus of her work lies on developing innovative product concepts within the context of a holistic user experience.

During her work at BSH Julia has provided support for various university competitions and won numerous design prizes for the company.

Lisa Gerkens is helping founders to make the right steps when building their ventures at Forward 31 by Porsche Digital.

She is a product development generalist, with a focus on driving decisions, getting teams unstuck and guiding them to figure out what their next steps should be and how to take them. Lisa is a true advocate for continuously testing both products and businesses and combining sales and product development.

Nancy leads the Experience Consulting team at PwC Germany, since her design and innovation studio IXDS, with studios in Berlin and Munich, was acquired by PwC in 2020.

Her passion lies in sustainable product and service innovation, focused on systemic change and value creation, based on sustainable business models. She supports ESG transformation projects in organizations from the design & innovation perspective and is globally responsible for PwC’s “Sustainable Innovation” approach.

Additional focus areas of her work included the empowerment of innovation teams in design studios, as well as in design and innovation departments within organizations, and organizational development (New Work).

Martin Wezowski has been loving and living design and innovation throughout his entire career. He moved across a broad range of design disciplines from visual, interaction, usability, service and system design to design as a strategic endeavor. He has been working in consumer electronics, media services and business software at companies such as Sony, Huawei and SAP in Poland, Sweden, China and Germany.

Currently Martin is on a mission to map, build and inspire a future we all want to live in. As Chief Designer and futurist for SAP’s Innovation Center Network & Chief Innovation Office, Martin crafts future outlooks, strategies and products, defining and running innovation frameworks to find out what’s next for SAP and the future of work.

Martin frequently shares his passion for the future of technology and design at venues such as TEDx, CES, SxSW, Webit, Ada Lovelace, CeBIT, MOBx, Grace Hopper, SIME or MLOVE. In March 2017, he was named one of 100 most innovative minds in Germany by the major financial newspaper Handelsblatt.

After finishing his studies at the University of Arts in Berlin, Carl Frech was substantially involved in the development of the MetaDesign AG for 12 years, particularly in the fields of digital media, corporate brand strategy, innovation and new business development.

Since 2002 he is working freelance as a business consultant for the creative industry, as a jury member in different subsidy programs and as presenter and speaker. He was the initiator of the first cooperative society in the communication branch, the NEXT AT eG and he has co-founded various companies; among others the Intuity Media Lab GmbH as well as the dreizeichen verlag GbR.

He is chairman of the board, partner and strategic consultant at Fuenfwerken Design AG and a member of the advisory council of Master International Business Management at the Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht, Berlin as well as member of the advisory council of the Sclable Business Solution GmbH, Vienna.

Since 2005 he is professor for design and conception with a focus on innovation at the Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften, Würzburg and teacher at the School of Design Thinking at Hasso-Plattner-Institut, Potsdam in the advanced track. His voluntary engagements include founding the gestaltBildung e.V. and membership at International Design Center Berlin (IDZ).

Prof. Dr. Manfred Thüring studied Psychology and Computer Science. He earned his doctorate for research on cognitive psychology at TU Berlin in 1990. During 13 years, he held a variety of managerial positions in companies in the information and communication technologies.

Since 2001, he has been the chair of Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics at the Department of Psychology and Ergonomics of the Berlin University of Technology (TUB).

He is one of the co-founders of the Master’s Program Human Factors and head of UseTree, the Berlin Center of Competence for Applied Usability Research. His major research topics are Cognitive Science, Human-Technology-Interaction, Traffic Psychology, as well as Usability Engineering and Testing.

After the apprenticeship as modeler for foundry, architecture and design Gerhard Nüssler studied industrial design at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. After his degree he initially started working with the Munich based design agency Neumeister Design and temporarily with NCS-Design in Rio de Janeiro. He founded the ergon3 design office in 1999.

Since June 2003, Gerhard Nüssler has been head of the brand design department Constructa Neff of BSH Bosch and Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH. He and his team have received numerous design prizes in the fields of medical technology, transport, electronics and telecommunication since completing his studies.

Peter Wouda is Head of Exterior Design at the Volkswagen Design Center in Potsdam. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in London in 1996, he has been working as a designer for the Volkswagen Group.

Peter started his career in Volkswagen Headquaters in Wolfsburg before going to Skoda, where he was responsible for Exterior Design between 2000 and 2006. Since 2007 he has been leading the Exterior Design Department in Volkswagens Group Design studio in Potsdam, near Berlin.

Together with his international team, he has been responsible for creating concept and production designs for Volkswagen and other group brands such as Audi, Skoda, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Ducati and Porsche, His team created the designs and final appearance of the Volkswagen XL1, amongst many others.

Anja leads the User Experience and Design team at Siemens Healthineers. Together with her team, she is passionate about improving the efficiency of care teams, increasing patient satisfaction and humanizing medical care.

After graduating with degrees in communication design and information design, Anja began her user experience design career in consultancies before moving to the corporate sector. Ever since, she has been building in-house experience design teams, and is continuously working to increase the impact of user experience in healthcare. She won several awards for her work as an experience designer, including the UX Design Award.

The goal of Sebastian Glende’s work is user orientation in the literal sense of the word - beyond products that have their function mainly because this function is feasible, towards innovations that make life easier and are fun to use.

Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Glende has been working on innovative approaches to user involvement for several years. He researched and worked at the TU Berlin and at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. In this context he supported a variety of product and service developments and helped to establish the Senior Research Group. In 2009, he founded YOUSE with Dr. Christoph Nedopil. YOUSE professionally integrates end users into innovation processes and thus helps to design new products and services in an easy and functional way.

Mr. Glende was and is active in several institutions and functions, e.g. in the International Ergonomics Association, in the innovation partnership of BMBF and VDE as well as in the expert group “Networked Life” of the TSB. He won, among others, the study prize of the Körber Foundation and the Berlin-Brandenburg business plan competition.

As CEO of YOUSE, he is primarily dedicated to the strategic development of user integration, the development of future-oriented research projects and, last but not least, to expand cooperation.

As Design Director at Fuenfwerken Berlin, Simone Heißel is responsible for digital brand management. With the user in focus, she pursues the goal of creating holistic digital user experiences with a high demand on functionality and design and making complex things easier.

As a user experience and user interface designer, she is responsible for all phases of the creative process, from strategic planning, conception and prototyping to the formulation of user interfaces. Her work has won awards as the red dot, the iF and the DMMA, among others.

From 2007 to 2010 Simone Heißel taught Interaction Design at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz in the course of studies Time Based Media and gives guest lectures at the UdK and MHMK Berlin, among others. In 2017 she was a member of the jury for the Annual Multimedia Award. She studied communication design at the University of Applied Sciences Wiesbaden.

Laura is currently building the first UX/UI team for Henkel (dx) globally. She makes sure that the motivation behind building new products and user needs align. Her team creates meaningful digital products by combining user needs, business models and branding.

She worked for leading digital and branding agencies before diving deeper into the field of business and innovation. She has a passion for inventing products and insists on following new ideas. She worked for brands such as Daimler, Airbus, VW, BMW, Siemens, ERGO, Migros, SOS-Kinderdorf and DHL.

In her spare time she coaches startup founders on digital product strategy and UX, helps students enter the UX world by mentoring them and blogs about UX-related topics.

Claudia Berger is Executive Director Design at Spark Reply, a subsidiary of Reply, a leading IT services group with over 130 highly specialized, separate companies.

Together with her team, Claudia works on cross-disciplinary projects. With a cross-industry view on the topic of digital transformation, she stands for the consistent integration of new methods, processes and tools.

Claudia studied industrial design with a focus on interaction design. Before joining Spark Reply, she worked at Designworks, A BMW Group Company (Munich), Phoenix Design (Stuttgart), Experientia (Turin) and Lunar Europe where she steered the development of the user experience department.

After graduating in product design at the Magdeburg University of Applied Sciences, Henrik Rieß joined User Interface Design GmbH near Stuttgart to work as an Interface Designer before moving on to his position as Art Director.

In 2012, he moved to Berlin, where he contributed to establishing the new office, which mainly focuses on interaction design and design research. As Creative Director, he looks after renowned customers such as Daimler, Giesecke & Devrient or Vorwerk.

In design research, Henrik Rieß focuses on developing tangible and easy-to-use universal design solutions for the field of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL). His tasks also include numerous presentations and workshops at HCI conferences as well as contributions to relevant technical and scientific publications.

In addition to mentoring term papers and theses at various design schools, Henrik Rieß works as a lecturer for basic interaction and design thinking oriented projects at the Magdeburg University of Applied Sciences.

Olga is a UX Design Manager at Amazon Web Services in Berlin, leading the AWS Design System. She's been at AWS for over 7 years, specializing in usability, accessibility, and building scalable design solutions. Olga has an MSc in Computer Science from Cracow University of Economics, where she studied Computer Science and Econometrics.

As designer and managing director of Scholz & Volkmer, Peter Post is responsible for the area of Connected Products. Born in Frankfurt in 1969, he studied communication design at Wiesbaden University of Applied Sciences. In 1995 Peter Post moved to the Netherlands, where he founded and managed Interaction Design departments at various agencies. His clients included KPN Telecom, TNT Post, Randstad and Dutch Police.

In 2006 he joined Scholz & Volkmer as a Unit Director. In 2008 he became Managing Director and serves clients such as Deutsche Bahn, Mercedes Benz, Lufthansa and Riese & Müller. Peter Post teaches Interaction Design and User Centered Design. His work has received awards such as the red dot, the iF and the ADC, among others.

He is a conception-strong UX designer with a lot of mobile and response experience, a passionate doer, a cheerleader who can manage teams and partners very well and pull them along.

Tapani Jokinen is an industrial designer working at the intersection of circular economy, systems, foresight, and design. He looks back at more than 25 years of extensive design experience in various capacities and global locations. In his daily work Tapani helps teams and businesses to become more resilient by applying circular design principles in order to make their future business, products, and services more sustainable.

Besides his work as a design consultant at the Fraunhofer IZM, an applied research institute for systems and electronics, he is the founder of TJ Design, a creative consulting firm that fuses strategic innovation and design with sustainability business practices. He was Head of Design Portfolio and Strategy at Microsoft / Nokia, and the initial designer behind the iconic Nokia 3310.

After studying industrial design at the FH Darmstadt, Johannes Geyer started at B/S/H, Munich, his design activities in the field of household appliances for the Siemens brand. In addition to various product categories, he dealt with a variety of visionary innovation topics and organized, among others, the first Siemens Home Appliances Design Award with the participation of several design universities.

Currently Johannes Geyer is globally responsible for Design Laundry Care for the Siemens brand, with a particular focus on European and Asian markets. Together with his team he has won numerous international design awards for a wide variety of products.

Marion Fröhlich builds state-of-the art B2B & enterprise systems that connect Zalando seamlessly with their suppliers and clients - from onboarding product catalogues to online multimedia content, and from aligning purchase quantities to scheduling deliveries into warehouses.

Prior to this Marion worked at companies like the ­SAP Design & Co-Innovation Center, Swisscom and Vodafone, helping customers globally to establish design practices within their organizations and building award-winning consumer products. Driven by designing collaboration, Marion aims to re-invent innovation culture and the set-up of design within businesses.

Following design studies at the academy of applied sciences in Munich and HFG in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Christoph Becke started his professional career in 1990 as a product designer at BSH Hausgeräte GmbH.

Mr Becke has filled leading positions in design and product development for the group’s various product categories and brands. He was named head of global design development for the Siemens brand in 2014.

Among his tasks, Becke organizes competitions and collaborative projects with design education institutions. He and his team have been awarded with numerous design prizes for their work at the company.

Stephanie Hölzlwimmer works as Director Innovation and UX at BOSCH Connected Mobility Solutions. This is a still-young Bosch division with the purpose to shape the future of mobility with connected services.

Stephanie is responsible for building a user-centered innovation system by leveraging design thinking and UX/UI design approaches. Her mission is to empower innovation and product development teams to create fascinating user-driven digital services for B2B-customers and partners.

Stephanie became a human-centered design enthusiast – and a HPI d.school certified DT coach – as Head of Product Management at BOSCH Power Tools where she pioneered the application of user-centric collaborative working methods in international, interdisciplinary product development teams.

Sabine is Principal Key Expert for Digital User Experience at Siemens Technology in Munich. She is passionate about exploring how technology impacts human behavior, businesses, and society.

She started her career as a user researcher and UX designer at multiple digital agencies and as a self-employed UX professional. After several years in the digital agency world, she joined the Institute of Information Management of the University of St.Gallen to research, teach, and consult on mobile business and business innovation, while pursuing her PhD on digital transformation strategies.

Martin Jentsch joined designaffairs in 2015 after finishing his Ph.D. on methodological aspects of user tests for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. He led the “Usability Concept” Team at designaffairs since 2017.

He focuses on constant confrontation with the rapidly changing challenges of interaction concepts, especially in the automotive sector and bringing together the potential of new technologies with user´s needs in the ideation as well as in the realization phases of projects.

Paul Gardien is Vice President of Philips Design and a member of the Philips Design Board. He is responsible for the global design strategy and as head of the Design Innovation team he’s managing the design research program, new business development and building new design capabilities.

Paul studied Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology and holds a PhD in Design Innovation from the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Pia Betton links design thinking to business. Originally from Denmark, Pia looks back at 20 years work experience within the areas of brand development, corporate design, design research, innovation and communication.

Pia has held management positions in organizations like MetaDesign, Institute of Electronic Business, 180° Business Academy and Edenspiekermann. Her international client portfolio covers private companies from many different industries like Lego, Bosch, Bang & Olufsen, E.ON and Carlsberg and public institutions like Deutsche Bahn, Danish Investment Fund and many more.

As an experienced lecturer, Pia covers subjects ranging from design and innovation to business, change and transformation.

Markus Turber is fascinated by designing desirable, sustainable and intelligently connected solutions. He founded Intuity, a strategic design and innovation lab based in Stuttgart, Germany, in 2002. The interdisciplinary teams at Intuity combine design with technology, IT and science. They help their clients succeed in the digital world.

Intuity has received numerous national honors and international awards for its work, including the UN World Summit Award. The joint development of digital products with young start-ups is particularly close to Markus' heart.

Ulrike Müller studied Industrial Design at Kassel University and graduated with an art college degree. She started her career in 1984 at AUDI AG, covering executive positions in the fields of design, marketing and sales.

Mrs. Müller initiated and conducted projects for the master’s degree programs Transportation and Car Design as well as mobility themes for visual communication students at Politecnico di Milano and Scuola Politecnica di Design. Her seminars focused on vehicles as living environments and future developments in mobility.

In early 2016, Ulrike Müller took over responsibility for the UX Design department at the Future Design Center Europe, a part of Volkswagen Group.

Oliver Gerstheimer is the founder and design director of the digital co-innovation agency chilli mind in Kassel, Germany. Following the founding of his company in 2001 he worked intensively on a pragmatic business method and design process, focusing on how to co-create new digital services and interactive products in a meaningful and human centric way.

Together with the extensively awarded chilli mind team of multi-stack-designers and creative fore-thinkers Oliver works for international clients in more than 15 different industry areas including eMobility, agriculture, healthcare and pharma, media and entertainment, education, fintech, telecommunication, transportation or industrial automation 5.0.

With over 20 years of design practice Oliver is an enthusiastic and well-known evangelist for human-centered design (HCD). He gives regular talks and publicizes papers in international platforms for design and digital transformation.

Eija Salmi (FRSA) is a global connector and advocate for international higher education and research in art, design and media. She has been working as Secretary General for the Cumulus International Association of Universities and Colleges in Art, Design and Media since its founding in 1990.

Eija takes it as her responsibility to empower upcoming generations by encouraging students and their alma maters to collaborate and to play an impactful role in the face of our world’s needs – by creating the right balance between the planet, people and profit. Her background is in finance, art history and languages, her credo: Do not imagine, live Cumulus!

Katina Sostmann has been working as a service- and product designer in commercial and academic contexts for many years realizing projects for international clients with a strong focus on digital Healthcare.

At the same time, she teaches and researches at different Universities. Since 2018, she is leading the cluster for digital health and as an Executive Creative Director responsible for the topic of Service Design at the IBM iX Studio Berlin.

Björn Sorge has been a consultant, entrepreneur and thought leader in digital business for over 20 years. He describes himself as a "child of the New Economy" with countless digital projects and products to his credit.

He is passionate about embedding a consistent customer-centric strategy and vision in the sense of "USER FIRST" in businesses. Björn is also firmly convinced that a strong focus on experience design in digital products is becoming increasingly important and is developing into a key competitive advantage.

His personal motto: You do well what you enjoy! And this is what he tries to convey in his daily work with design teams. In his role as Vice President Experience Design, he is currently engaged in the digital transformation of ProSiebenSat1.

Layla Keramat is Executive Creative Director with over 25 years’ experience defining and designing innovative digital solutions with her teams.

With a human centered design approach, she designs complex systems of service and product for connected car, electric & future mobility, telcos, digital wallet, IoT (at home and industry), and future cities for clients such as Porsche, Volkswagen, IKEA, China UnionPay, Deutsche Telekom, AT&T, o2 Telefonica, Saudi Telekom, Samsung, Siemens, General Electric, 9/11 Memorial Museum, and other leading brands.

Her programs have been successfully brought to markets across the US, Europe, Middle East, and China. Layla has spoken recently on these topics at the InnoTrans 2018 on the future of mobility, University Darmstadt, be.digital Digital Innovation Day, University of St. Gallen, Lucerne University, NYU Museum Studies Master’s Program as well as served as an Adjunct Professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Born in Frankfurt, Layla is based in Munich where she leads a multi-disciplinary creative team.

After his university degree in engineering, Claude Toussaint passed his postgraduate design course at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design. He started working at designaffairs GmbH in 1999 and set up the interface division.

Between 2007 and 2018, Claude was one of four owners and anaging partners of designaffairs GmbH. He was head of the interdisciplinary interface team and managed projects for customers like Porsche, MAN, Opel, Siemens, Bosch, Datev, RWE.

Since June 2017 Claude is Managing Partner of naval robotics, the first German start-up in social robotics. Besides his role as managing partner, Claude is working as guest lecture at HTA Luzern and speaker on international congress events. Claude published several articles about Human Centered and User Interface Design in journals and books.