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.

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.

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 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Hamed Yahyaei is a senior designer, an elected representative, trustee and member of the Leadership and Process of Change working group at Scania Akademikerföreningen (AF), a core team member and co-founder of VW Group Digital Meetup and member of VW group Future Heads.

As a systems thinker and enterprise design thinking coach with more than 17 years of professional experience in different design areas, Hamed is involved in design leadership and mentorship on a global scale.

His diverse roles include and have included: IxDA awards peer reviewer and local leader in Sweden; UX Mentor at Nielsen Norman Group and other design communities; CX Mentor at Customer Experience Professional Association; Service Design Global Conference Director at SDN; Service Design Mentor & Course Training Reviewer at Service Design College; Entrepreneurship & Innovation Mentor for MSc students at Lund University; Founder & User Group Leader of Miro Scandinavia; Global Goals Jam, Global Gov Jam, Global CX day, and World Interaction Design Day organizer in Sweden.

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.

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.

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.

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!