I make complex things make sense.

I'm a Product Design Leader working where product, design and technology overlap. For more than 20 years, I've been turning tangled problems into systems people can understand, use and build on.

statusopen to the next hard problem
basedkarlsruhe · working globally
uptime20+ years, still curious

From many sources to one usable solution

sources
AI consolidates
human in the loop
AI integrates
refine
usable solution
Selected work

Not case studies.

These are arguments. The projects are the evidence.

Before all of that

80+ projects. 15 years. A lot of interfaces.

Before leading Product Design, I spent more than a decade working independently as a UX/UI designer and frontend developer, long before either was a well-defined job title.

The technology changed. The underlying question stayed remarkably consistent: How can we make something complex easier to understand and easier to use?

Vue · React · Svelte · d3.js · PatternLab · PWA · Atomic Design · Pattern Libraries · Living Styleguides

80+

Projects

15

Years independent

10+

Industries

0

Crypto startups

Selected clients

adidasABBAXOR / HansgroheNutriciaAURELIUS AGDeutscher HandballbundNADAHaufe AkademiepixxioCronimet
A few things I believe

AI is progress: now you can make the same mistakes faster.

Which is the whole case for judgment.

Good leadership is mostly about creating clarity.

People don't need every answer. They need to know what matters, why, and what they can own.

I like complex problems. I just don't like complicated solutions.

Complexity is where the interesting work is. Complication is a solution that gave up.

If only one person understands the system, it isn't a system.

It is a dependency with a nice interface.

The best solution is the one that survives contact with reality.

A concept nobody can build is not a solution, it is a slide.

Good design is not decoration.

It is a way of making decisions visible.

The long version
1995

CERN, Geneva

The World Wide Web was still young. I worked on the Safety Guide for Experiments. Somewhere along the way, I met Tim Berners-Lee. I did not yet know that the web would become my professional home for the next 30 years.

2002

University of Mannheim

Diploma in Business Administration: Marketing, Business Informatics, Psychology. Diploma thesis: “Usability of Brand Websites.”

2003

Eckart & Partner, Munich

Usability Consultant. Usability studies. Customer satisfaction research. The beginning of a long-running interest in how people actually use the things companies build.

2005

siebennull

Independent UX/UI Designer and Frontend Developer. 80+ projects. UX, UI, Frontend, Data visualization, Design systems. Long before “Design Systems” became a job title, I was building pattern libraries because maintaining the same interface in twelve different places seemed like a bad idea.

2015

Accenture Interactive

UX/UI/Frontend Manager. International SAP Fiori projects. Deutsche Telekom UX Squad.

2018

BrandMaker → Uptempo

Freelance UX Designer, then Head of Product Design. More than eight years of product, design, leadership, systems and a considerable amount of complexity.

2026

What's next

I am interested in roles where product, design, technology and people need to come together. Especially when the problem is complex enough that the obvious solution is probably wrong.