I am the flexible UX-Design extension to your digital team
As a freelance UX Designer, I extend teams when needed with my broad knowledge and more than 10 years of experience in UX Design – from UX Research all the way to UI Design, all from one source.
My services
Differentiators
This is what makes working with me special:
My philosophyMy Philosophy
Probably the most important differentiators are the principles that guide me:
Life-centered Design • Holistic approach • Challenging assumptions • Learning by Doing • Being curious • Viewing challenges as opportunities • Valuing collaboration • Empathy
Flexibility
I offer a high amount of flexibility to my clients. I extend their team only when and only as long as they need me. On top of that, I help with coaching and mentoring junior designers. While bringing this flexibility, I still try to be as close to my client and the team as possible.
Mindful & Considerate
It is important to me that whatever I work on is well thought through. I seek out other perspectives and opinions and try to bring in as much information as possible to ensure we create value and prevent unintended consequences.
One contact person
My clients enjoy only having one contact person for all questions about UX-related issues. This prevents important information from getting lost, saves time, ensures knowledge transfer from one field (e.g. UX Research) to others (e.g. UX Design), and makes it simply easier for my clients to always know whom to talk to.
High Quality
Clients, developers, and other team members kindly told me, that my work is of very high quality. I know that I am a perfectionist and always want to improve and optimize everything I do. And I think this in turn improves the quality of my work a lot!
Experience
Working on different projects and industries over the past 10 years made me gain a lot of experience that I can transfer onto every new project I work on. I believe that these knowledge transfers are especially important in complex projects and the ever-evolving digital space.
I have worked closely with Katha on several projects for #KADIA over the past 10 years. These projects have been critical to the evolution of our corporate brand and the development of new world-class products. Katha has a quick grasp, is very analytical and consistently approaches projects from a user perspective. Most importantly, she is able to inspire team members to the maximum and deliver project results with a high level of perfection. Great to have Katha on board!
Henning Klein (CEO at KADIA Produktion GmbH + Co.)
I can highly recommend Katharina as a UI/UX Designer! She immediately understood what we needed, provided exceptional implementation proposals and all of that in no time. The human factor as well: absolutely great! To make it short: Everyone in our team was sincerely enthusiastic!
Christian Ebbecke (CEO at HRlab)
Katha supported us in the very beginnings of vialytics. In this time, when our product strategy was still unclear, Katha trained us on how to conduct customer research interviews. The awesome design Katha created and the learnings on how to do customer research is still a very central part of vialytics. Working together with her was also great fun, the whole team loved her.
Patrick Glaser (Co-Founder and CEO at vialytics)
About my services
My services can best be summarized with the term User Experience Design. Starting from UX Research – either to discover new insights or to test and later optimize solutions – all the way to UI Design, including the creation of Design Systems. My clients get almost all the skills and knowledge they need for improving or developing new digital experiences from one source.
This also means that my clients will only have one contact person for all these different topics. I combine a lot of interdepending skills and knowledge and therefore can accompany them along the whole digital project and transfer knowledge from one part (e.g. UX Research) to another (e.g. UX Design or UI Design). This is especially important in the often rather complex projects I am working on because information can quickly get lost or it would at least be really time-consuming to make sure that everybody is always on the same page.
My clients also enjoy the high amount of flexibility I bring to the table, as I can be added to their team only when they need my specific skillset and the amount of experience from different projects I offer. I am also happy to get feedback that my work is of high quality and developers enjoy working with me as I am open to their feedback.
UX Research
My service offerings around UX Research generally serve one or both of these two purposes: Either for discovery to generate insights and learn important facts about the context of use and the human and non-human life affected by the solution. Or for evaluation to see if the solution we went with is working or if it needs adjustment.
I also often teach my research skills and knowledge in order to provide my clients with the ability to do ongoing research by themselves – which is generally an important skill to have.
UX Research activities are often a mix of interviews, observations, contextual inquiries, usability testing, desk research, and more – depending on the project, the available time, and depending on what depth of information can already be provided by experts in the team. All research activities generally go hand in hand with my UX Design services.
Working together with Katharina was always very fruitful and goal-oriented. I especially valued her reliability as well as her realistic specifications regarding the effort or process – you always know what you can expect and can count on that. The results were better than expected and always connected to new and interesting insights, as the client was always in the center. The wheel did not always have to be reinvented to find the best and pragmatic solution for the user. \nI am looking forward to further common projects in the future!
Gleb Christoffel (CEO at Craftnote)
- Contextual InquiryQualitative InterviewDesk ResearchUsability TestingObservation(Proto) Persona QuestionnaireBusiness Model Testing
UX Design
My service offering around UX Design contains first and foremost all such activities that serve the concept, content, and structure of a service, product, or system. This might contain the creation of (proto-) personas, user journey maps, sketching, wireframing, prototyping, user flows, storyboarding, the facilitation of workshops, and other activities. A lot of them go hand in hand with UX Research activities, since they can draw information from them and feed back into the planning of research endeavors.
I also teach or mentor my client’s team around UX Design to enable them to build up this skill in their company.
On top of that, I also now offer my clients to help them with their agile projects as a Scrum Master. If you want to find out more about UX Design, you can have a look at this blog post.
I've known Katharina for many years now. She has accompanied us from the early beginnings as a small student initiative all the way to becoming a real Startup. Even after we moved to Berlin I always came back to working with Katharina because I was never able to find someone else who understands design, User Experience, and the specifics of what we need as well as Katharina. The last project was the complete redesign of our website. I am stunned by what amount of professionalism and warm-heartedness Katharina works with and think that the result is outstanding! I am already looking forward to the next project together with her and can recommend her with all my heart.
Svanja Kleemann (Founder & CEO at One Week Experience)
- BrandingLogodesignIcondesignData VisualizationScreendesignDesign SystemIllustrationdesignWebdesign
UI Design
My service offering around UI Design can range from only a few Screendesigns to provide my clients with a quick opportunity to freshen up their look-and-feel, all the way to full-fledged Design Systems, that are more sustainable and will provide my clients with a well functioning and lasting way of creating new designs for their products all by themselves.
Most of the time I will have been working on the project before, doing UX Design and/or UX Research, which enhances the quality of the UI Design capabilities.
I also teach or mentor my clients' teams around UI Design to enable them to build up this skill in their team.
I had the pleasure to participate in a Sketch workshop executed by Katharina, it was very well organized and she was always able to answer all our questions in detail.\nThe content was very well tailored to our team with different skill levels, so everyone learned a lot and no one had to be bored. While learning we also had a lot of fun, so it was a very successful workshop! \nRecommendation!
Mario Rieker (UX & Strategy)
- BrandingLogodesignIcondesignData VisualizationScreendesignDesign SystemIllustrationdesignWebdesign
How I work
These are the general modes you'll find me working in:
I first need to learn before I can start to design. This can take different forms: Sometimes a lot of knowledge about the users, their needs, and the context of use already exist and I can build on this existing knowledge. Other times, there are too many unknowns and it might be necessary to do a bit of research first, especially if starting with our assumptions would be too risky.