I am currently enjoying three weeks of vacation, so this post is written in a little country house next to the fireplace while watching the sea. Time for relaxation, exploration, and reflection. Overall the past year has been great for me and I am very grateful for the experiences including great travels to conferences in Slovenia and Cyprus, my summer in Tallinn, weekend trips to Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Basel, Bern, and Berlin, and now I am exploring the art museums of Madrid and hiking levadas (at least as far as I am able to with a torn muscle fibre) in Madeira.

2016 has been a good year

I learned a lot the past year and also my dissertation made good progress – I published a study with T-Systems, we conducted the Digital Maturity & Transformation study for the second time (with the third round currently in progress), and almost all my dissertation papers are written and even published, so I can now move on to writing my umbrella paper and finishing the dissertation by end of June before embarking on a new adventure:

I am starting out as a freelancer in 2017

I had this thought in my mind for quite some time and now seems like the right time to try it out and make this a reality. After I finish my dissertation in the first half of this year, I will be available as a freelancer to work on digital transformation or digital innovation projects.

I have worked as user researcher, user experience designer / information architect for seven years before I started my dissertation in business innovation (titled “The Fuzzy Front-End of Digital Transformation”). Now I am combining these two perspectives – UX design with a more strategic view – in my work. My general purpose is designing better digital products and services and ultimately improving how humans interact with technology. Projects that I will be working on in the future could include (but of course are not limited to) the following:

• Digital transformation strategy: Collaborate with clients on evaluating their status quo and defining a viable business strategy for the digital age.
• Develop and evaluate business cases for innovative products and services.
• Qualitative and quantitative research & market analysis in order to generate insights on customers and define how to address these.
• Translate results of user research into actionable insights.
• UX design & information architecture using all tools of the human-centered design process.

Besides this I am available as speaker or panelist for different events (please check out my profile on speakerinnen.org).

I am excited about this challenge and look forward to start working on this new chapter.