At SMF, I learned hands‑on design.
In almost two years, I’ve worked on so many projects that I can’t count them—literally, I didn’t keep track.
Smart Mobile Factory was* a software development agency in Berlin that focused on, as the name suggests, development for both iOS and Android.
I’ve worked there for the good part of two years as UX designer and, as it’s typical for a B2B agency, was working on dozens of projects in that time.
*Unfortunately, they closed down a few years later.
I worked on projects for FRÖBEL, Duden, Stowasser and „Berlin’s Wasserbetriebe“.
Gunning through pitches, concepts, designs, iterations, tests, and presentations each week left no time for slow learning curves.
I also had the chance to set up the entire, internal process regarding usability testing. Besides implementing usability tests with our users, I introduced the importance of these tests to the entire company.
Part of that effort was a talk I gave in February 2020, explaining to our PMs and devs why they aren’t their users. You can watch it here.
My biggest project was the FRÖBEL Team app.
FRÖBEL is Germany’s largest daycare provider with around two hundred facilities and over four thousand employees. After we won a pitch at the end of 2019, I was the sole designer for the app.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 was in full force once I got to the user- and usability testing part, so all of that happened online. But these interviews were still enlightening: I was shown live by the educators in their daycare centers what the problems are with the current processes and what relief they hope our digital solution will bring.
With the help of these interviews, I was able to develop the design concept into a technical concept and focus on the actual problems faced by FRÖBEL employees.
The app makes a lot of things easier in everyday working life: time recording, sick notes, vacation requests; Everything that was previously difficult and complicated in analogue was recorded, analyzed and translated into digital in an improved manner.
This project is important to me because I was able to gain experience in different directions. Towards user testing in real environments, persuasion and politics to convince management + customers of your own ideas, cross-platform development and its hurdles, miscommunication with devs & PMs, countless meetings on the same topics, ... and so on.