My Services While you focus on technology, I take care of the user's needs.
Let's collaborate and co-create something that makes sense!
user research.
The art of asking questions
To identify goals and tasks, behavioral patterns and pain, underlying motivations and needs, I conduct qualitative and quantitative user research. I'm gonna focus on the audience, ask the right questions, and listen deeply while applying suitable methods:
360° business & competitor analysis
quantitiative research such as surveys
qualitative research such as interviews
explorative activities such as contextual inquiries and shadowing
To communicate and visualize my research findings, I deliver and present to your team (depending on study set-up):
(proto) personas and empathy maps
cross-system/-departmental scenarios
customer and user journeys
task flows and jobs to be done
system processes and work flows
My actionable reports come with deep insights that are turned into business requirements and include solution proposals. My informed feedback helps my clients to quickly improve existing products and optimise the user experience.
ux strategy.
Wayfinding in the UX jungle
I help start-ups and established companies to uncover new use cases and balance business with user goals:
imagine the best product vision / MVP
define s.m.a.r.t. goals on high level
create a sprint based roadmap
define the product backlog in JIRA
refine related epics and user stories
run agile meetings and design reviews
manage tasks and work streams in JIRA
To bring your mission to life, I am happy to share and apply proven best practices. As a result, you get UX tasks integrated into your (agile) product development process.
My ability to communicate complex and even unpopular topics can help balance stakeholders interests. Today I still like to blog, especially about ux related topics such as
Personas am Leben halten for TestingTime.
UX Research OPS - such as evaluating a research tool and study repository
UX Design OPS - such as a design system that includes a pattern library
To structure and standardize content, I define modular templates, create ux/ui pattern libraries and design guidelines.
EX Employee Experience to uncover what team members struggle with - e.g. inefficient workflows, and how to streamline them
OD Organisational Development to improve the collaboration between cross-functional teams, e.g. design and engineering
creative collaboration.
Workshops that enable innovation
The magic of design happens when people from different disciplines come together: product owners, developers, business managers, sales and marketing, and users. To understand which concepts and designs work best, we create prototypes and validate hypothesis with help of user and usability testing.
Develop your Design Thinking Mindset
Walking in your customer's footsteps
Interactive Paper Prototyping and Testing
User Story Mapping and the UX Matrix
GOOGLE Design Sprint / 3-4-5 days
For teams that want to skill up their research and design skills, I offer a variety of hands-on workshops and trainings. All stakeholders and experience levels are welcome to join: My speciality is developing individually tailored sessions according to your current project status and the needs of your team.
Life has many different colors - let's worship diversity to find creative solutions that matter.
To individuals, I offer accompanying career coaching and mentoring as well as personal self-exploration based on Zen Coaching. Book me as your personal coach and mentor, e.g. to review your portfolio/CV and enhance or change your UX career.
Prototyping.
Assumptions vs. reality
Once it's clear WHAT our users need - backed up on insights from user research and data analysis - we can move further forward in the iterative design process. To understand HOW a design can best enable users getting their tasks done and fullfill users needs, I'm gonna 'fake it till we make it' and create the following to validate assumptions:
scenic comic-style storyboards
process diagrams and screen flows
sitemaps with menues and hierarchies
low-fi wireframes and mock-ups
high-fi interactive click dummies
Such deliverables are usually build in industry standard prototyping tools like AXURE and FIGMA. Sometimes scribbles in Miro or sketches in PowerPoint are good enough, because they enable us to quickly evaluate and implement valuable feedback.
Testing Time.
Validating hypothesis
Hypothesis driven design allows us to make design decisions based on actual data, not personal preferences.
To see if our product follows expectations, if features are understood and accepted, we need to test them with people that match the user group, based on the repective persona:
early concept discussions
moderated user testing
unmoderated usability testing
card-sorting and tree-testing
A/B testing of variants
Regular testing - remotely or in person - ensures continuous improvement and makes a product user friendly, with intuitive navigation and interaction design. In order to find suitable probands, I collaborate with recruting agencies such as Testingtime.
Expert review.
UX audit from a professional
Get my expert feedback and actionable insights on your app or website if you
are uncertain about best usability
know about some navigation issues
suffer from poor customer ratings
want more prospects to sign-up and buy
Often being the first and only UX expert in a company, I faced a lot of brownfield projects. Ask me to systematically analyse your product and do a cognitive walkthrough for a specific persona and scenario. I will proof the design against usability heuristics, common standards, and your UX design and brand guidelines.
My detailed report with priotized UX, UI and usability issues includes recommendations and proposals to improve conceptual ideas, interaction design, restructure content and create concise UI copy.
About Me
I'm a digital consultant with focus on human centered design
With an empathic and analytical mindset, I help start-ups and international players to transform good ideas into better products and innovative services.
My wide experiences in many disciplines, job roles and companies made me a T-shaped person who loves to collaborate in interdisciplinary teams. Since 2015 I have contributed to over 30 UX research and design projects and gained extensive expertise in the end-to-end product development process.
I enjoy working closely with cross-functional teams according to agile, scrum and SAFe principles, often step naturally into the role of a product owner and can also turn into a scrum master. For teams that want to skill up their UX skills, I offer hands-on trainings and facilitate co-creation workshops such as Design Sprints. To individuals, I offer career coaching and mentoring.
"We got to know Ms. Kreuz as a very good and professional user researcher and were always satisfied with the results."
Sebastian Schulz, Manager User Experience, Union Investment
"Thank you very much for the excellent work you have done on Paved Road. I was really impressed by how deeply you delved into this complex domain and brought data to light for the Hyperspace portal."
Dirk Lehmannn, CI/CD Product Management, SAP SE
"Susanne led two meaningful and interactive sessions on developing one's Customer Journey for the SINGA Factory startup program in Zurich. Working with Susanne was a real pleasure for both the participants from refugee and migrant backgrounds and the SINGA team. Thank you very much!"
Ella Stadler-Stuart, Co-founder Rflect, Director of Studies CAS Women Leading Digital HWZ
"SWISS ARMY KNIFE is the phrase that comes to mind when I think about Susanne (no pun intended). ... I found her to be a great communicator, a fine writer, a sharp but gentle project manager, an experienced UX-designer and researcher as well as an extremely nice and fun person to be around!"
Sabina Perssons, Co-founder & Chief Experience Officer at Custellence
My WorkSelected projects how I help my clients.
Find even more case studies in my
TOPTAL profile.
Project details I helped to set up a process and create guidelines for storytellers.
CHALLENGE: SAP opened it's Design and Co-Innovation Center (DCC) in the AppHaus Heidelberg in 2013. Numerous awesome customer projects have been successfully rolled out, but outside the team almost nobody knew about. On the website, content to promote their design services was missing.
APPROACH: I helped the marketing team to set up a process, created guidelines for storytellers, and train designated authors. Together with other content providers I contributed marketing texts and created case studies about customer projects. I interviewed people involved in projects, created content according to SAP's brand voice guidelines, integrated feedback from stakeholders, and convinced customer's to agree on the release of their success stories.
VALUE: My stories have been regularly published on the DCC's website to spread the great work achieved by SAP's design strategists. See User Experience Design Services.
Employer: DCC at SAP AG
Date: 2012-2014
Job Role: Storyteller, Copy Writer, Process Consultant
Project details I enabled first-time users get started with microtests
CHALLENGE: The client operates a B2B platform that focuses on micro-testing. The user base consists mainly of eCommerce sellers in the USA who want to optimize their images e.g. on Amazon. The company was in the process of launching its testing platform in Europe but faced difficulties to convert prospects into customers.
APPROACH: First, I put myself in the shoes of a trial user and discovered the biggest pain points with the web app. Collecting and discussing user stories for the main use cases helped to prioritise user tasks and create a new hierarchy in the system. To brainstorm ideas how to simplify the complex user interface of the onboarding flow, I led a co-creation workshop to help consider the bigger picture. To ensure best onboarding experience, I helped design a product tour to run the first poll and receive valuable insights.
Task: UX Design
Date: Oct - Dec 2022
Services: UX Review, Information Architecture, UX Design
Project details I have contributed to non profit organisations and start-ups and founded a social business.
For many years I imported handicraft such as knitwear to sell on fairs and in my online shop on the DIY platform dawanda now etsy. On my wordpress website, I still blog about Estonian culture.
Many people that once had to flew their country don't have much contact with locals. I support social sewing lessons for refugees and migrants to design clothes, experience intercultural exchange, and practice German.
Organizer: Social Fabric, Zurich
I was coaching participants of the Factory - a tech start-up program for for refugees and migrants @Impact Hub, Zurich - in customer experience and user centered design.
Organizer: Singa Switzerland, Zurich
Many of Mannheim’s former army camps are a temporary home to thousands of refugees. I helped people learning German and doing handicraft such as kniting and sewing.
Organizer: Deutsches Rotes Kreuz @Benjamin Franklin Village, Mannheim
The non profit association Mannheim sagt Ja! e.V. was founded in 2015 to support refugees and create a welcome culture. The simple website was soon outdated as everybody was busy with voluntary projects. Instead a facebook group was released, growing fast with hundreds of new members monthly. The fb channel was used to announce events, arrange and organize volunteer jobs. But information is hard to find on fb! There is also no option to donate money online or become actually a member of the NGO.
I started an online survey and talked to people about their wishes and ideas regarding the current website. The overwhelming feedback was that a website with more information and photos about the NGO and it's activities was desired. We decided to relaunch the wordpress website and I have chosen a bootstrap template to support modern and responsive web design. I created a prototype in SKETCH and published a first digital version. I continiuously restructured existing content and added new, improved the usability and redesigned the emotional look and feel. Finally, I migrated the content, implemented the new template and handed everything over to the content editors.
After a design thinking session, several international teams prototyped and pitched social apps such as Docugee.
Organizer: Hackerstolz e.V. @Zeitraumexit e.V., Mannheim
As a coach I helped social entrepreneurs & start-ups to ideate, prototype & pitch their ideas.
Organizer: Social Impact Start @AppHaus, Heidelberg & Alte Feuerwache, Mannheim
Project details I have reported about IT consulting projects for magazines and websites.
As a storyteller I helped cbs Corporate Business Solutions GmbH to promote their consulting projects with SAP industry customers. I transformed complex and abstract technical information, for example about SAP system landscape restructuring projects, into readable and entertaining success stories that attract many readers. My stories have been published on the client’s website and in IT magazines such as E3 Magazin.
»I commend Susanne Kreuz for doing excellent work as a storyteller for our companies' reference projects.«
Holger Scheel, Director Sales & Marketing, cbs Corporate Business Solutions GmbH, Heidelberg
Client: cbs Corporate Business Solutions GmbH
Date: 2012- 2015
Service: Storytelling, Copy Writing
Project details I have designed and created an embedded help concept for web applications such as SAP Cloud for Planning.
Tooltips, labels and messages are an integrated part of the UI and support users in getting their tasks done. But, is this enough to make you understand a powerful business application that you have never used before? From user observation and beta version testing I discovered that people struggle with many issues - including things that the development team expected to be intuitively understood. My survey brought to light that users desired more conceptional information about how the app actually works. But how to integrate such information on the ui, without distracting from work?
I created a context sensitive help concept in close collaboration with my ux design colleagues. An overlay was developed to display only relevant topics from the connected CMS. In my role as a Senior Information Developer I worked with many agile project teams to develop web applications such as SAP Cloud for Planning. Their modern ux and ui concept is based on human centered design principles.
»It was a pleasure to work with Susanne! She adapted quickly to complex and dynamic development projects and structured the collaboration process across teams and locations. Her passion and commitment ensured the delivery of high-quality user assistance for web applications. Our customers highly appreciate the modern and supportive help concept that Susanne has driven from ideation to implemention.«
Dr. Vasco Alexander Schmidt, Director User Assistance - SAP HANA Platform & Database SAP SE, Walldorf, Germany
Employer: SAP AG
Date : 2012-2015
Job Role: Senior Information Developer, User Researcher, UX Designer
Project details I have done in-depth interviews to identify different user journeys.
GOAL: Digitalize banking processes for the customer service.
APPROACH: To follow up on quantitative research, I have developed study guidelines and interviewed over 30 people from different departments and international partners. This enabled me to identify the typical use cases, main personas and what pain and gain comes within a specific job role.
To re-imagine the user journeys discovered, I have facilitated several workshops with many stakeholders. After collaborative sketching, I have wire-framed solutions and transferred them into low-fi prototypes. To verify our hypothesis, I have moderated user testing with probands.
VALUE: My analysis and actionable insight reports helped the client to strengthen the product vision and improve the usability of the current solutions. My ux recommendations informed the decision on frameworks to use for future platforms, how a new tool for the customer service could look like, and how to best integrate within the self-service landscape.
Client: Union Investment
Date: 12/2020-12/2021
Services: User Research, Information Architecture, Co-Creation Workshops, UX Design
Project details I have facilitated a 4-day GOOGLE DESIGN SPRINT
GOAL: Support the global project to renew their partner portal with insights from collaborative workshop sessions with customers.
CHALLENGE: The Automotive Aftermarket team offers software services for the BOSCH Car Service partners through a business partner portal. Numerous SaaS have been delivered to more than 16.000 Bosch-certified garages worldwide. But sometimes the adoption rate was low - why?
APPROACH: Together with the Product Manager, UX Designer and Sales representative, we invited BOSCH car service garage owners to join our workshop session. From conducting interviews with several users, we learned that general usability issues (e.g. poor filter and search options) and superfluous features seemed to cause the most problems.
VALUE: We got first hand responses that often surprised us: like the newsletter tool was not being used because the owners did not know their customers' email addresses! Instead of prototyping, we focused on the use cases to understand what the daily jobs of a garage owner look like. By having customers assign user stories according to their importance and frequency, BOSCH was able to develop a smarter and lighter portal.
Client: Robert Bosch Automotive GmbH, Germany
Date: 11/2019 - 2/2022
Services: workshop facilitation, business requirement analysis, ideation
Project details I have documented a young people's customer journey for 1 & 1 Telecommunications.
1 & 1 Telecommunication is an online distributer selling DSL and mobile phone contracts to private and business consumers. The main sales channel of the German based company is an e-commerce website, offering a wide range of contracts, hardware and additional features. To identify the pain points of the current online shop and order process, I started with an expert review of the DSL related sections.
To enhance awareness for the user’s needs, I organized a workshop with product managers. From the insights of guerilla user research, I developed a persona representing young consumers and mapped their needs and use case to a customer journey. The visualisation comprises the emotional experience of young people when trying to find an appropriate DSL contract, including all touchpoints, and numerous ideas to improve each step.
Client: 1 & 1 Telecommunications
Date: 6-7/2016
Service: Service Design, UX concept, UX/UI training, Consultancy, User Research
Project details I have prototyped mobile apps with OB//CC developers.
A lot of technically skilled developers work with OB//CC, but ux know-how was missing to design of the mobile app MoveCard. Therefore I was asked to 1) skill-up the team with ux and human centered design methods, 2) guide them through the conception process and 3) innovate ideas for the interaction and interface design. I prepared an inhouse workshop and proposed not to use any digital tools but instead work with tons of colored post-its on flipchart paper. My idea was a totally new experience for the nerds that turned out to make a lot of fun, and finally became a big success.
Together with the team we created a lean business canvas, drafted the persona Shopping queen Sarah, collected user tasks and developed the information architecture. Once the basic concept was evaluated, we built a detailed paper prototype for every single screen of the app. We tested all steps and interactions with colleagues to get valuable feedback and new ideas. We took photos of the paper prototype and created a simple click dummy with the POP app. As a result I was asked to help with the concept for a second, more complex mobile app project.
Client: OB//CC online business and community
Date: 8 & 10/2016
Service: UX Consultancy, Conception, Training
Project details I have reviewed the Verivox web portal to improve the user experience.
The website Verivox is an online portal for consumers to compare contract details of service providers such as telecommunication or power suppliers and sign the best contract. Because the internal usability engineer left the company and new features have not been tested since, I was asked to make an expert review for a relaunched section of the portal.
I tested three given scenarios for desktop and smartphone according to common usability heuristics such as Nielsen & Molich, DIN EN ISO 9241-110, and internal guidelines. I documented and priotized all upcoming issues such as inconsistencies and misleading ui texts. I presented my findings to the product and development team so they could comment and discuss high prio items. From my expert review, a requirement list to redesign the UI, improve the interaction design and fix bugs was created. My feedback helped the team leader to get attention for the need and value of regular usability testing.
»Ms. Kreuz helped our internal team with an expert review. We we're impressed by the quality of her work!«
Frank Herberg, Conversion Rate Architect, Heidelberg, Germany
Client: Verivox GmbH
Date: 3-4/2016
Service: Expert review, UX Consultant,
Project details I have facilitated collaborative design workshops and worked as a trainer for the XDi institute.
XDi is a Cologne based training institute with focus on user centered design. To expand internationally in Europe, they were looking for skilled ux design experts with broad project experience to run the seminar "UX 360° – Certified UX & Usability Expert". The main topic was User Experience Design and Usability & UCD for Web, Tablet and Smartphone. For new learning goals, such a lean and agile development, the content needed to be updated, and the material enhanced with new methods.
I prepared and facilitated the topics in a 3-5 day training format for an international audience, such as industrial product and graphic designers, project managers, frontend and backend developers, and content writers. Most participants had a different background and knowledge level, also expectations and motivations varied. Therefore I had to be flexible and adjust every training individually to the audience with help of modular units.
I was also asked to run inhouse trainings, for example to convince the management of Mimacom to follow a user centered design approach, or to implement a user centered mindset at the Virtual Identityuser love barcamp. Together with other digital consultants I experienced my first GOOGLE Design Sprint in summer 2018 - since then I love to facilitate a full sprint week with a diverse team!
Client: XDi Xperience Design Institute, Cologne, Germany
Project details I have created test hypothesis and variants to optimize www.bahn.de.
DB Vertrieb GmbH is the distribution and sales partner for Deutsche Bahn, serving more than 5 million passengers daily. The company does not only manage more than 3.000 travel centers and agencies, but also 6.700 ticket machines. During the last years, the amount of online tickets has constantly grown: 30 million bookings have been made via the website Deutsche Bahn in 2014, while 4 million smartphone tickets have been booked in the mobile app DB Navigator. But usability problems have been encoutered from online surveys, customer feedback, and ux monitoring. The wide range of travel and transport services required more personalised campaigns: a business traveller has other needs then a budget traveller. Therefore an analytics team for quantitative testing was installed to optimize the conversion rate of clicks and bookings.
With my expert knowledge in human centered design, I reviewed several sections of the website along the user journey of specific personas. My feedback added a holistic point of view and made pain points and wishes of different user groups more obvious. After building hypothesis what might change the user's behaviour, I started to create several screen variants, for example recoloring the tab design, or changing the button wording or header image. To make prototyping and testing more efficient and provide a consistent user experience across the whole website, I started to create a ux widget library according to the corporate ui design.
I pushed along to use Axure for prototyping, which did not only help to visualise and discuss my proposals with the team. It was also a valuable starting point for front end developers to create variants in HTML and for testers to set up experiments based on my ideas and to manipulate the website using Optimizely. My ongoing feedback helped the team of online writers to optimize the quality of their content beyond testing, by simply transcribing long product descriptions into readable bullet lists, using only approved terminology, or logically restructuring the navigation menu.
