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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Werner Spicka has been Executive Director of the interdisciplinary Interaction Experience Unit since 2016.

His focus is based on constant confrontation with the rapidly changing challenges of interaction design and the transfer of strategies and ideas into feasible designs. His wide knowledge and cross-industry experience in design development, implementation and consulting help him and his team to create new and brand-defining interactive experiences.

He gives lectures on current UI design developments and methods in UI design and has been awarded prizes such as the "iF communication design award" and the "Good Design Award."

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.

Birgit Weller is a product designer, since 1994 a professor of industrial design in Hanover and since 2012 head of the department Industrial Design at HTW in Berlin. Birgit covers the areas of design, project development and design methodology. She has headed diverse international research projects and abroad on subjects such as universal design thinking, gender codes in design and colour in an intercultural context.

After graduating in 1985 at the Kunsthochschule Berlin she worked as a designer at LEW/AEG/Bombardier Transportation. Since that time she has taken on tasks in the fields of transportation, investment and consumer goods design, packaging, exhibition design and strategic design consultation for globally active companies (Bombardier, Miele, Deutsche Bahn, etc.) and the Government.

She is working in many countries including India, France, Finland, China, Cuba or the Netherlands. She has chaired the International Design Centre Berlin since 2002. She is a co-founder of the agency »use Identity Network of Design« in 2007. Birgit was a member of the board of the International Design Center Berlin between 2002 and 2019.

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.